As a boy
As a toddler, obviously interested in the different things that happened when plugs were inserted into the wall socket of a public hall, Michael succeeded in plunging the whole building into darkness during a play rehearsal. Escaping from his ‘minder’ for a few moments, he picked up the dresser’s scissors and plunged them into the power point. He sat there for a few minutes, completely unruffled and perfectly satisfied with his discovery, so much so, he never tried the same trick again.
It can be no surprise that he soon made electrical engineering a passion and by the time war broke out, he was already building his own projects. When rewards were offered for the return of silk parachutes to the military (dropped and abandoned by airmen escaping damaged planes), Michael built a few two-way radios for his small band of friends and himself. Roughly 12 inches square, the heavy devices were tied to their bikes. The boys would then scout the neighbourhood for parachutes and other finds that could be turned in for rewards, keeping each other informed as they explored. By this time, he was going to school in Coventry and witnessed the Coventry Blitz in November 1940, from a few miles away, when he was 12.
As soon as he was old enough he joined the Air Cadets and his bedroom was festooned with aircraft models he made himself (kits being unavailable). His mother was not surprised that, in common with many 5th and 6th formers, Michael’s target was military service, but age barred enlistment until 1946. She often described how, at the age of eight, in the village of Combroke in Warwickshire, he lined up all the village boys he could find, most of them much older, and marched them up and down the street for hours.
As a young teenager, he began to repair electrical items and soon turned his hobby into a small business. He didn’t like constantly having to remind people to pay for the work he had done for them though and with no-one free to help with the admin (his mother was running both a Post Office and a Tea Garden as well as looking after his baby sister and his father was constantly away on important contracts as a master stone mason) he immersed himself in the repairs he enjoyed, rather than the billing of clients, that he didn’t.
By the time he was 14, he had learned to drive in local fields. As soon as he was old enough to drive, legally, he took to the road, with enthusiasm – turning his engineering mind to the maintenance and servicing of the vehicles he drove. He even developed a knack for driving stunts, including being able to flip a car in the air, at speed, while it twisted 360 degrees then landing on all four wheels and continuing his journey. Sun Rising Hill may have been mentioned as the scene of at least one of those incidents – he also enjoyed using a ramp to tip his car at an angle so he could drive it on only two wheels. As a young man, in the army, he not only did the round Britain Rally, he also ended up running a unit that trained army drivers to do the advanced test. As a consequence, having not needed to even pass a test, when he first started, he opted to take the advanced test, himself, and passed with flying colours.
