“I played around with bits of slate and broken glass”

When I was a boy growing up amongst the back fields of industrial Lancashire I loved making arrowheads with bits of slate. They weren’t very good but I spent a lot of time imagining I was a hunter in the valley of the River Irwell.

I also found broken glass and made what I thought was jewellery out of it.

When I was a bit older I got interested in astronomy and got a telescope for Christmas one year. It opened up the universe to me, even from the less than ideal skies of Lancashire.