[...]... Easter fair visited nearby Shipley Glen, and Fred and his father set off gleefully to scoop up prizes on the shooting and darts Another attraction caught their eye: a small tent to which people were admitted one at a time at a charge of the substantial sum of sixpence The growing queue hinted at wonders within, and the Hoyles joined it When their turn came, Fred was left outside while his father went... local education committee Fred had kept his flower, and he produced it, wilted but still bearing six petals, and told the committee of the teacher’s mistake The case was dropped, but the incident served to confirm Fred in his disregard for formal education It was simple enough to leave home in the morning as if for school, but to head instead for the factories and mills, where Fred, with his chubby face... But within a year business slumped, and with Coming to light / 5 Mabel ill after the birth of a daughter the family rented out their house and went to stay as paying guests of an acquaintance in Essex in southern England There, in the flat landscape of the Thames Estuary, Fred befriended a local boy who taught him the art of truanting, and he applied it extensively on his return to school in Yorkshire... short-sighted Fred s apparent capacity to work out for himself the kinds of information other children were learning at school was sufficient evidence for his mother to believe that formal schooling was not an urgent requirement for her boy However, when he was six, school became compulsory by law, and a boom in his father’s business provided the fees for a small private school His parents hoped that young Fred. .. weather and awaiting the next instalment of this saga, added Jeans to his list of heroes Fred Hoyle was 15 years old when Sir James Jeans stirred up the establishment with his tall tale of God the Mathematician, and he enjoyed the whole affair thoroughly.7 Missing school in order to explore the latest science was typical of Fred Hoyle’s childhood, which teetered between the kind of rebellion that could have... alerting his parents to the fact that they were likely to be in serious trouble with the law So they let their Fred choose a school in the hope that he might then go there more often, and he chose the one about a mile away that was attended by most of his friends among the local children While Fred performed creditably in class – and won prizes in essay competitions at the local Temperance Society on... at school, often faking illness to legitimize his absence Then an incident brought the truanting to the attention of higher authorities: Fred abandoned school after a teacher conducting a nature class insisted that a certain local flower had five petals The specimen Fred had collected clearly had six He was pondering the teacher’s neglect of the evidence when she delivered a sharp slap to the side of... servants there It was a rather ambitious investment for the Hoyles, but it gave them splendid views across the Milnerfield Estate and up to the Yorkshire moors Hoyle later reckoned that he could have walked to Edinburgh and been in countryside all the way Married women were not allowed to teach in schools, so Mabel stayed at home, and when Fred was a baby, she played the piano for hours every 4 / Coming... Canal For a while, Fred s ambition was to be a bargee Then he was off into the hills, exploring for birds and flowers, rocks and clouds, until tea-time, when the dishevelled lad would saunter home as if from school There were more delights at home Ben Hoyle had left school at the age of eleven, but was an enthusiastic reader, particularly about science One particular treasure for Fred was Ben’s chemistry... told him that they had only come for the music So Mabel left young Fred tucked up in bed while she earned a living at the cinema in Bingley, and his earliest memory was of lying awake wondering what he would do if she did not come back Mabel always did come back At home during the day, she turned schoolteacher and while she could not coax Fred to the piano, she did give him a good start in other subjects, .