I was enrolled by my Father from birth to attend the Lycée Français in South Kensington, where he had been a pupil in the years after WW1.

In my school report 1952-53, I was placed 22nd in my class.

In most subjects I was Assez Bien, which means: So-so.

Handwriting: Too Irregular.

Drawing: 5½ out of 6.

Behaviour: “Passable” with an exclamation mark.

Certificate of distinction: No.

REPORT by year tutor L. F. Seriex:

• “Peter gets distracted by too many things to work well”
• “Could do much better”

I recognise myself here. I saw few differences between the classroom and the playground. There were roughly 2,000 students at the French Lycée. The recreation ground was always crowded.

I retain a clear memory of my first day. The gigantic classroom barely contained the deafening shrill of many frightened 6-year-old children.

The noise of their voices amplified by the hard walls was unlike any noise I had heard before. A few tears, then we were left to the teacher. I soon forgot the unfamiliarity. I was at the “Lycée” from 1952 to ’54.

I became more fluent in French at the Lycée. My Father, born in Paris, spoke French with me at home. My gift of bilingualism has been one of my most productive attributes throughout my life. I used to speak Dutch at home with my Mother. I progressed to German GCE ‘O’ Level. During my TEFL years, I got familiar with Italian and Spanish. These helped me when I met and married my Brazilian wife.

1952 was before the dawn of the Age of Gratuitous Danger, and front doors of homes or of churches were seldom locked. I was very little, so when I finished school most of the afternoon I was free to cross the Cromwell Road and explore the Natural History Museum on my own with never a thought of kidnap.

Though they are fragmentary memories, like shards of crystal dreams, I can easily bring myself back to my small circle of vision alone in the great halls standing in the immediate presence of a staggering variety of crystals and fossils on display under glass. Those natural wonders still burn bright for me right this minute!

All classes were taught in French by French speaking staff, including half an hour of English per week.

My father removed me in 1954 when I started to spell most words in English with a terminal ‘e’.

I went to a Chelsea boys only prep school where physical discipline was violent, random, painful and mostly unjustified. My enjoyable time was spent with my school friends.

My Father planned I sit for the “Challenge”. I comprehensively flunked this entrance test to Westminster School. Even at 13, it reeked to me of a bullying ecosystem, an undeserved entitlement to privilege and of pointless ingrained traditions. So my Dad and I went on a Home Counties road trip to find a school in a hurry. Because I was well-spoken, and crammed in Latin and Greek, the school which accepted me placed me in a year above my age group.

Unlike the inner London male-only prep school with its strict uniform, its beatings with a cane by the headmaster and classrooms full the teachers’ cigarette smoke, I found myself catapulted into a new and distracting coeducational community. Five years at a boarding school based on liberal principles of education and set in lush green countryside.

I had been so distracted by the time the first year ended, I was told I’d have to repeat it. This made me happy, because it meant the lovely Christine and I would share the same class.

In 1964, I returned to Swinging Sixties London to retake my three ‘A’ Levels at the French Lycée in South Ken. My Dad chose l be crammed for the Oxford University general entrance exam. Glandular fever halted all academic progress.

In 1967, I was cut off by depression from peer group friends and family until my return to the brighter world of nine-to-five, marriage, mortgage and children from 1977.

Life began for me in 2013 with the radical transformation “EveryNow”.