THERE was a future for Paul Hampson in coal mining, a youth employment officer said.

“Your son will never make a commercial artist, Mrs Hampson, he told Paul’s mum back in the mid-Sixties. “You’ve got to be really good at that job.”

Paul disagreed: he was sure that that’s exactly what he could and should be.

He completed three years at the Huddersfield School of Art under the inspirational Ron Marris.

“It was fortunate for me that a far-sighted student art teacher recognised in me a (questionable) talent and was able to pull one or two important strings in order to secure an interview with Reg Napier, the respected Art School principal of the day,” said Paul.

“Very few pupils from Almondbury Secondary were given the opportunity to attend the Huddersfield School of Art back then, so I had a huge amount to prove to a number of people after the manilla envelope of acceptance landed on our Farfield Road doormat.

“Four years later, after cutting my trainee designer teeth in Leeds and subsequently Elland, I made my decision: carefully folding my wide lapelled suit and a couple of pairs of flared Levis, I left Huddersfield in my blue VW Beetle for the south of England.

“There were more opportunities in the South back then. After marrying my beautiful girlfriend Liz – a Dalton girl – in December of that year, we moved into a rented house in Southampton.

“With me having landed a job with an advertising agency and Liz a secretarial position in the department of politics at Southampton University, we were a young couple on a mission.

“The track of the day was Abba – ‘Waterloo, couldn’t escape if you wanted to’. It was New Year 1974.

In the 35 years since ‘temporarily’ moving South, I’ve worked in a number of agencies and design groups.

“I even had a five year spell in London with advertising agency Saatchi & Saatchi during the memorable ‘Labour Isn’t Working’ period and during Mrs Thatcher’s Conservative Party campaign.

“Next came the challenge of running my own graphic design business while holding down a second career as a published cartoonist/illustrator. I still do both now and continue to enjoy them.

“Yes, Liz and I are still married. I mention this because it seems a bit unusual these days.

“We have two cracking sons, Tom and Luke, who until recently stuck around the family home, even though they were grown up.

“They spoke in whispers of it being cheaper living at home rather than taking on a mortgage, something to do with Gordon’s global recession.”

The family count themselves lucky to have spent 25 years living in the village of Burley, in the New Forest National Park- as it’s now called.

The village is within 22 miles driving distance of Southampton and Paul’s design business, but was always out in the country where the ponies, cattle and deer roam free.

The Hampsons are six miles from the coast as the crow flies, with Southampton and the Solent in the east and Bournemouth and Poole in the west. Their cattle grid keeps out the ponies and deer.

“These days, although we don’t travel back to Huddersfield as often as we’d like, we have family and many close friends from our youth club and school days in the Sixties,” Paul added.

“They are proper friends where there’s never any ice to break, even though we may not have met for several years. We keep in regular touch, visiting one another’s houses occasionally to discuss old times, indulge in a spot of middle-aged binge drinking – and if we’re honest, sometimes to discuss old times, ways to divide hardy perennials, or the price of cauliflower.

“We love it here in the Forest, though I’ll sometimes look at one of those property websites, click on to the Huddersfield section and think, Hmmm… you might not have seen the last of us yet, Huddersfield.”

“Recently, we travelled back north to watch the newly relegated Southampton Football Club being totally outclassed by an upbeat Town.

“We drove up with Luke, the younger of our two Southampton-born sons and a keen football supporter.

“The Terriers won 3-1 and in the August sunshine I scanned the ‘away’ crowd in an attempt to spot him, as we were seated 100yds away from each other.

“He was sitting with his fellow Saints supporters of course and I was sitting with the Terriers fans. What else would you expect from an Almondbury lad?”

If anybody is wondering about the albino donkey picture above, the story is this: Paul was working at home this spring when his wife Liz spotted an unusual animal in their garden.

Paul dashed outside an got a couple of pictures of the new-born.

“The ponies, donkeys and cattle roam around the lanes here in Burley and they have freedom to wander wherever they like, including into the garden if you let them,” said Paul.

You can contact Paul on wwwpaulhampson.co.uk or

www.hampsondsign.com