16th February 1948.  I left school, aged 16,  and started at Marconi's Wireless Telegraph  Company aa a Craft Apprentice.  I had announced my intention of leaving in the summer, so had been moved to Economics 6 as a temporary measure.  My decision was greeted with some disappointment, as I was a Foundation Scholar, and had great prospects, they said, for an Open Scholarship to Cambridge.  But I had decided instead to go for a Marconi Apprenticeship, and my mind was made up, in spite of all attempts to persuade me to change my mind!  At the same time, I enrolled in the London BSc degree course at what was then the Mid Essex Technical College and School of Art, and committed myself to do the course on the basis of Day Release and evenings.