When I left school
I left school at sixteen because I could leave. I left with no qualifications whatsoever. I wasn't interested in taking them. I knew I couldn't do it so I didn't see the point. As soon as the bell rang I ran out of there.

When I left school I started out on YTSs, which I thought stood for 'young, thick and stupid'.
Then I went into tiling - working as a labourer. I did manual labour for the rest of my life, not reading and writing, but carrying and fetching.

Master of disguise
Disguising the reading and writing, well I was very good at getting other people to do it for me. If I had something to read at work I'd get four or five people together and get them to read it out loud. I avoided it - if I had an interview I turned up two or three days beforehand and I'd ask to take the forms home and get someone else to fill them in for me. No one knew, not even my best mate. You get good at hiding things.

How I got started
What prompted me to get back into education was doing a manual labourer's job - I slipped and hurt my back. After a year of not being able to do much, I had to do something! There was an ad on the telly about online learning, so I decided to give them a call. At first, I was too frightened to ask for help, each time the phone rang, I'd hang up. One day a woman answered "can I help you?" I was tongue-tied! I didn't know how to ask for help. She got me an appointment through learndirect and from there it just snowballed.

Asking for help
Once I had made that initial step over the threshold, of walking into the classroom, well the teachers are not like the teachers we used to have. They are more friendly and open. One teacher asked me in my first lesson 'are you dyslexic? Can we send you for a test?' I was determined to prove I wasn't dyslexic but I found out I was. That's why I had problems reading and writing.

The help was phenomenal. You can't ask for better help. If one teacher can't solve a problem, they will find someone who can.

First day at College
The first day I went to college, I was really nervous.
I turned up two hours beforehand and sat outside the college in the car thinking 'do I really need to do this?' Well, I got out of the car and I thought I'll have a look around. I walked up to the classroom and you've never seen a door so big! It looked frightening.
To walk through that door took a lot of nerve.
But once I saw the teacher in there, smiling and so welcoming, it was okay. But the first time was the scariest thing I've ever done in my life.

Finally awake
Education is so important to me now. It's like for the last forty years I have been sitting in a coma and all of a sudden someone says 'you can wake up'. And the world's opened up to me. I don't have to do Joe Blogg's job, I can do one of my own, which is fantastic.

Make that call
I was the biggest culprit of not having an education; if I could get out of it I would. But my advice for those who are in the same situation is to make that phone call and turn up at college.

They are friendly and helpful. If you speak to somebody and take that first step of getting into education, the world is your oyster. You can go out and get what you want; you don't have to settle for second best.