I left school in Glasgow in 1960 and went to work in the shipyards on the Clyde – Alexander Stephen of Linthouse, where Billy Connolly also worked at the time. Sadly, I never met him as we were in different departments, and his reputation was yet to flourish.  As I was unsuccessfully trying to pass engineering exams, I decided after four years to change direction and left the shipyards.  At that time, uncertificated teaching was one temporary career option, and I got a job with Glasgow Education Department at the Glasgow School for the Deaf, where I spent a happy and very educational year and a half working with a great bunch of deaf children, one of whom, Clive Mason, went on the be a signer on TV.   

At this time, my interest in and reading about Psychology was growing, and I felt the need to expand my horizons and leave Glasgow, so I applied successfully to Queens and Professor George Seth and I started here in the Autumn of 1965.

One of my earliest impressions of Belfast was how salient religion was. Every news report seemed to identify people by their religious affiliation. Given my Glasgow background and the well-known Rangers-Celtic contest, perhaps I should not have been surprised.  Anyway, I settled in very easily and quickly felt at home. I was one of a relatively small number of non-Irish students at that time, and we tended to hang out together – Roger Johnson, Terry Bishop, Nick Rosier (who taught me how to strip a car engine – couldn’t do it now) and Denis O’Donovan.  Roger, Denis and I shared a flat in Wellesley Avenue.  The political situation had not heated up yet, but the civil rights movement was very much in evidence, and I knew some of its members. Indeed, Bernadette Devlin (McAliskey) was a fellow Psychology student.  I have many memories of lectures in Lennoxvale from George Seth, George Shouksmith and Peter McEwan, and recovery time in the ‘Bot’ (Botanic) and the ‘Egg’ (Eglantine).  

As this was my second (or third) attempt at a career, I worked hard, and was rewarded with a first-class honours degree. Which led me to a PhD at University College London under Phil Johnson-Laird. A difficult choice, as I had been thinking of a training in clinical psychology, but a number of conversations with Professor Seth influenced me, and I am happy that they did.

That PhD then led me to a lectureship at Strathclyde University, working with Professor Rudolf Schaffer, a delightful man with a traumatic history, having come to Britain on the Kindertransport, losing both his parents in concentration camps.   Academic life suited me, and my research activity, on various aspects of child development – children as witnesses, prosocial behaviour and bullying, stranger-danger – kept me entertained for many years. I taught courses on Individual Differences and Psycholinguistics as well as Developmental Psychology.  Apart from a brief period when I considered moving, I stayed happily at Strathclyde and ended up as Head of Department, finally retiring in 2008. By that time, I had remarried and had a young family so, as one of my colleagues noted – “That’s your retirement sorted”. Which has been the case.

Profile submitted April 2024.