My grandparents set great store by education and all the children stayed on at school past the minimum leaving age of 14. Dad left school at 16 having taken the school certificate and was successful in obtaining a clerical post.
I haven't a huge amount of detail about dads early career, but I know he worked in the rag trade, then for NCR. At the point he met and married my mother he was working for British Gaumont in their Soho offices, where, on the floor above, John Logie Baird was busy inventing Television.
I don't think Dad ever tried cycle skating but couldn't resist including this curiosity here.
However, as a young man about town Dad went to see a show every Saturday night until the fateful day when he and his friends realised they had seen everything they considered worth seeing in the whole of the West End.
Holidays were taken in a large gang at Sandown on the Isle of Wight and it was these trips that seeded the idea of a permanent move there. In the meantime Dad was spending a fair amount of his leisure time playing tennis and had joined the local tennis club in Dulwich Park. It was here that he met my mother.