After leaving employment at Claridges Hotel in London in October '95 I returned to Grimsby for a couple of weeks. While home I found out about a TESOL course at Hull College, Spring St. Although I had no degree (usually a requirement) my 3 language A-levels and the completion of a twenty page English language test helped me on the course. So in January '96, after having worked at Selfridges over Christmas and the New Year I returned to Hull to study.

Here are some of the girls on the TESOL course but I'm sure I'm going prematurely senile. Out of the five young trainee teachers and the young moslem student I can only remember the names of two.


I can remember Sarah in the front especially well because one day several months later and thousands of miles away from Hull where this photo was taken I bumped into Sarah Barnes in Lotte Department Store in Seoul. The last I heard was that she was marrying an American serviceman in Seoul.
Also I remember Ann's name (2nd from right.) There's no particular reason that I should remember or forget any names in particular here - that's just the way it's happened. To the left here you can see Anne, Richard and Lisa at Leeanes end of course party.

In this picture you can see many of the Chinese Students studying at Hull College around Spring '96. I believe that 2nd from the left is Kenny,third from the right I believe is Henry and far right is definitely michael (Damn, why didn't I make notes?)The majority of these students are from Hong Kong although the third chap from the right comes from mainland China and Michael has lived in the UK for 23 years.

The young lady here in front of myself and Michael is Victoria Sala from Bilbao who studied English at Hull College while I was studying there for my TESOL. All the student's you see here are student's we had to teach as part of our training. So as we were all students together, we socialised a lot. Michael had been in the UK, at this time for 23 years and at 62 was a beginner in English. This is one of the dangers of socialising only within your ethnic group and I've seen so many westerners who have lived in Korea for ten years or more but still haven't learnt more than 'Hello' and 'thank you' in Korean.Michael gets my total support for not letting his age hold him back - if only he'd stop letting his daughter do his homework.

I know that this picture's pretty poor but I remember taking it and the flash not going off only to find out it was the last of the film. I include it because it has some really nice people on it. On the right is Anne and next to her are two young arabic sisters who were totally shy most of the time, then Margaret. In the foreground is one young Turkish guy who was so nice I'm embarrassed not to be able to recall his name and then there's Leanne who held the end of course party at her place in Hull.

There was a whole group of Spaniards living on Ferensway and they had a great housewarming one night.
Here I am with Martha, Jose Antonio, Jean-Yves from Belgium,Sonya and Marrisa.