Garrick Stevens - 1955 to 1958
I left Launceston with mixed feelings. After taking O-levels and having boarded for one year I rejoined my mother who had moved to live in Newmarket, Suffolk, where she was the local health visitor. My younger brother Robin had already joined the local Grammar School where I took my A-levels. (Robin earned a First at Brunel, then a DPhil at Oxford and is at Nottingham: post includes being Vice Dean of Science. Not bad for a kid who 'failed' the 11+).

Having a mixed bag of A-levels, I embarked on a sandwich course with AEI who sponsored me to study electrical engineering at what is now City University. The work experience was very interesting and although I started with real interest in electronics,  I found much more appealing working in factories building large turbines and the like.

During the training, I decided I needed further education in business and got offers from Manchester, Sheffield and Warwick University where I gained my Masters in 1968.

The career was pretty well mapped out - until the recession of 1974/5, when the international company I was working at in Leicester went bust and I found that I was one of many well qualified individuals looking for a job with young kids and a mortgage to pay. Having decided that the engineering industry was unlikely to employ me in the near term, I found a job with Citibank where I spent the next six-and-a-half years learning about lending or renting money to the Corporate market. I also learned and applied financial engineering, the sort which is now well known after the Enron saga. Having developed a trail-blazing structure and a new relationship with the National Coal Board for an off-balance-sheet £62 million transaction - I did not like the prospect of a job in the Middle East with the Bank.

I spent a while working for a Jacob Rothschild company engaged in tax shelters, and was asked to join a company which took me into the large computer mainframe leasing and trading marketplace. The skill set I had acquired brought together a pretty extensive knowledge of finance, tax and contract law to the extent that our team found ourselves having to lead many of the major legal practices on the structures that we were using. The founders sold out for some £55m in 1987 and I became UK Treasurer to a £400m balance sheet business with severe problems after a series of bad acquisitions.

I then took the opportunity to get a new venture together with an ex colleague - and had an interesting time looking for venture capital and getting a new business established - in time for a major recession, and losing it. Looking back - there were some good lessons.

For the past 10 years I have been working for myself as a consultant - having realised that building a portfolio of revenue streams makes a lot of sense. Although not 'retired', I am able to juggle my time to do a lot of the things that independence allows.

My wife and I married in 1965, having met at a dance at a teacher training college in Coventry. We live on the edge of the Chiltern Hills in Berkhamsted, Herts, about 30 minutes and miles from central London. We have two adult daughters one of whom is a teacher and the second is in marketing at a leading City legal practice - both live within a 10 minute drive.

Having decided more than 25 years ago that being an opinionated observer of politics was too easy an option I became a paid up Liberal and now Lib Dem. I live in a Town and constituency regarded as a safe Tory seat - so after 20 plus years of campaigning my group has the majority on our Town Council - for the first time ever. I was honoured that my colleagues asked me to be Mayor during 01/02 - and promptly found I had even less control over my diary than previously. I was instrumental in getting our Town's Jubilee event together this year - and found [via the web] a Cornish pottery company to make a special Mug for our Town's young children.

Although we travel and holiday in different parts of the country with our West Highland Terriers, it's been a long time since I visited Launceston. I am sure the re-union will be a great experience for all of us - I am looking forward to it.