Suicidal: BULLIED & RIDICULED AT SCHOOL - traumatic; deleterious impact for over 50 years....

Chris' life has always been challenging, painfully shy as a child, he was mercilessly bullied and humiliated from the very first day at his secondary school (Barclay in Stevenage), crowned by an especially cruel episode, where his self-confidence was utterly shattered: tricked into asking a girl out for the first time, then being mocked for months to follow, each time wishing the ground would open up (upon reflection, he cannot but conclude it would have been better for him to have committed suicide to save the anguish of what has followed...). Fiona Cameron and her brother Hamish plus all the other toe-rags involved, should be congratulated, for repeatedly inflicting trauma on him; such behaviour warranting consideration for permanent exclusion nowadays; he met some of the culprits 27 years later at a 'class reunion' in a pub in Stevenage - chatting to them, it was obvious to Chris that they had not improved much with age, no doubt bringing up their off-spring to behave in a similar, uncivilised way. Perhaps they sent their children to Barclay School, contributing to it being on Special Measures these days? Had Chris done anything to justify being treated in such a 'moronic' fashion? Of course not. Was it the teachers fault? NO, the parents are to blame. Our UK politicians do not have the courage to tell the truth, for fear of losing votes. Why should teachers be expected to have exceptional 'crowd control' and 'prison guard' skills? Most teachers enter their profession to help pupils, many are outstanding - if only their students were able to take advantage of what is on offer. Having travelled extensively, I know just how fortunate we are to live and be educated in the UK, yet too many waste golden opportunities due to immaturity and a lack of parental guidance and insufficient support of teachers trying their best.

Chris as a baby, on his father's knee - always could catch a ball as he proved as prize close-catcher in his First XI cricket team. Little did he know of the ordeals he was to suffer at the hands of cruel bullies at the Barclay School, Stevenage. Much better for him to have been drowned at birth. The saddest consideration was that he was in the A1 class (the most academically able in the school) - all should be thoroughly ashamed of themselves but Chris is sure they are not, no doubt bringing up their own children to inflict such pain on other children. Long over-due that such school pupils were PERMANENTLY EXCLUDED. That would rapidly put an end to disgraceful widespread bullying which continues in British Schools.

The excruciating experience at school directly led, several years later, to further humiliation at a social event Chris Chadwell organised for the University of Southampton Royal Naval Unit at a Portsmouth hotel, involving the daughter of a Rear Admiral he had been set-up with and another member of the unit studying at Portsmouth Polytechnic, who had never conducted himself as an 'Officer & Gentleman', turning up unaccompanied and 'getting off' with this spoilt little madam when Chris' back was turned, running the event. What a mug Chris was. Treating females with respect and dignity never works, as they prefer the 'bad' boys and thus get their just deserts..... Chris' understandable reaction to this humiliation ruled out any chance he had to secure the grade of degree required to be eligible to undertake the doctorate, he was subsequently offered to study for in a new field of botanical informatics in 1980 (he should have made more of a fuss at the time, resigned from the unit, demanding a public apology from the senior naval officer, whose daughter had behaved so badly and then abandoned his place at university, which would have meant he was not around to foolishly accept the invitation to join the University's scientific expedition to Ladakh in 1980, as team-leader of a botanical project and all that has followed - Chris 'came to the rescue' to enable to two 'girls' to participate in the excursion to the Trans Himalaya, along with the 'boy' on whose his recommendation led to their participation, yet they let Chris down badly, once the leader and co-leader turned out to be incompetent, the former mentally unstable, leaving Chris to struggle back to the UK alone whilst seriously ill, yet the others had the gall to lie in the expedition report, blaming Chris. Had it been the final member of the 'team' been so afflicted, Chris would have insisted on changes being made to unsatisfactory hygiene and if required, accompanied the 'boy' back to the UK - after all safety comes first with all members of a team having responsibility for the well-being of the others. Subsequent travels in the Himalaya, as leader of over twenty expeditions, illustrated Chris to be much tougher and more capable than the contemptible other members of that expedition.

Despite the disastrous end to his first expedition, which took him years to recover from (indeed he is still troubled by the betrayal) Chris continued to act as a gullible 'Good Samaritan' in life, instinctively feeling sorry for others, often intervening to protect them - not that this has served him well in life. After all, one of the reasons Chris paid Fiona Cameron the compliment of asking her out at Barclay School, was that he felt sorry for her being picked upon cruelly being called 'flatsy', as she was flat-chested at the time - only for her to turn on him. A warning in life - never act in a considerate, kind-hearted way, as it points out your inherent gullibility & weakness, expecting people to treat you in a civilised way. Instead you are used and 'shat' upon, such as happened to Chris in recent years with the BBC (who employed a incompetent liar of a journalist) followed by the Scottish Rock Garden Club after Chris protected several senior members who supplied him with seed from Nepal, from being 'named and shamed' - the 'Committee' cancelled a lecture tour of Scottish Groups of the Society, which had been arranged to raise money for The Britain-Nepal Medical Trust following the 2015 Earthquake in Nepal; Chris had offered to donate the lecture fees he was to deliver to this charity. This pathetic decision led to poor people in Nepal losing out on the equivalent of thousands of pounds of support.

Chris, bottom right. What right did the scum at Barclay School have to make his life a misery, permanently destroying his confidence?

For the past 5 years Chris has suffered from peripheral neuropathy due to severe nerve damage; his feet are largely numb, frequently cold, causing significant pain for much of every single day. This has been debilitating both physically and mentally. The cocktail of drugs he takes for this and other associated conditions includes three major pain-killers at their maximum dosage, which cannot be doing him much good; the next stage will be opiod-patches. His late mother was passionate about all aspects of history including at a local level and genealogy. Chris used to be happy to reminisce about the pleasanter memories of his childhood and time at university whenever he travelled past Stevenage and Southampton on the train, en route to lectures he has given to clubs and societies around the UK since 1984. He had largely buried in his mind, the especially damaging events covered in the paragraphs above, though his confidence had been harmed for life - never once ever speaking to anyone about them, bearing the shame alone. He cannot recall a single genuine friend at school nor university. Then in 2019, passing through the New Forest to speak to a group, he was thinking about mentioning in his introduction to the talk, his time at the University of Southampton and its Royal Naval Unit, given the Solent was close-by. Unhappily, less favourable memories came to mind, as did those from his miserable schooldays, almost 50 years ago. For months, whenever in major pain (for much of every single day) and when attempting to sleep, the humiliations went over and over in his head, dozens and dozens of times a day. No doubt he qualified as 'clinically' depressed and suicidal. Presumably suffering, decades later, from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder? It would have been better if he never went to secondary school nor attended university......

Chris could not help thinking of his paternal grandfather during these horrible episodes, Leonard Allan Chadwell MC

(see: https://sites.google.com/a/shpa.org.uk/main/lt-leonard-chadwell-mc-chris-chadwell-s-grandfather---an-englishman-to-be-proud-of.) Leonard exhibited considerable bravery during WWI, culminating in the award of a Military Cross. He survived the war but was deeply troubled mentally by his experiences, with events years later leading him to consider himself to be a failure. Leonard committed suicide by laying his neck upon a railway line near Iver (where Chris would train-spot aged about 11 or 12), his severed head being found some distance away from his body. Chris went close to calling a taxi to take him from his home a couple of miles away, to Iver station but could not find the 'courage' to do what his grandfather had...

WHAT LOVELY PEOPLE INHABIT BRITAIN WHO HAVE TREATED LEONARD'S GRANDSON IN SUCH A DESPICABLE FASHION. HOWEVER, "AS YOU SOW, SO SHALL YOU REAP" IS THE BASIC UNDERSTANDING OF HOW THE 'LAW OF CAUSE AND EFFECT' WORKS - A PERSON'S ACTIONS, WHETHER GOOD OR BAD, WILL OFTEN HAVE CONSEQUENCES FOR THEM.... IT NOW SEEMS THAT SOME OF THE CULPRITS FROM BARCLAY SCHOOL (and perhaps SOUTHAMPTON UNIVERSITY) HAVE ALREADY 'REAPED' THEIR REWARD FOR THEIR NOXIOUS SCHDENFREUDE AND THE RESULTANT DAMAGE DONE TO CHRIS CHADWELL.

IN VERY RECENT TIMES THERE HAS BEEN PUBLIC MENTION OF MENTAL HEALTH ISSUES OF SERVICEMEN & WOMEN ALONG WIH SPORTSMEN & WOMEN AND NOT BEFORE TIME, YET WE FAIL TO ADDRESS WIDESPREAD BULLYING IN OUR 'GREAT BRITISH' SOCIETY PARTICULARLY THOSE WHO CAUSE THESE ISSUES IN OTHERS. GIVEN WHAT HAPPENED TO CHRIS, IT IS HARDLY SURPRISING, THAT HE HAS MERELY HAD A NUMBER OF PARTIAL BREAK-DOWNS; THESE HAVE NOT LED TO HIM BEING SECTIONED. HE HAS, IN FACT, SHOWED REMARKABLE STRENGTH OF CHARACTER AND RESILIENCE. HIS MOTHER WAS SECTIONED ON A COUPLE OF OCCASIONS. FORTUNATELY, A MAJORITY OF TIME, CHRIS CHADWELL HAS NOT 'LET THE BUGGERS GET HIM DOWN'. THIS PAGE OF HIS WEB-SITE IS PART OF HIS EFFORTS TO "SPEAK UP AND BE COUNTED".

NO MATTER HOW MANY YEARS CHRIS HAS LEFT, SOONER, RATHER THAN LATER, THIS WORLD IS GOING TO BECOME UNINHABITABLE, ITS POPULATION TOO STUPID TO DO SUFFICIENT ABOUT IT. SADLY, THE LIKES OF TRUMP SHALL CONTINUE TO THRIVE. A GLOOMY OUTLOOK BUT AS A SCIENTIST, CHRIS HAS REALISED FOR DECADES WHAT IS COMING. OVERALL, HE DOES NOT HAVE FOND MEMORIES OF LIFE. PERHAPS HE IS ON THE AUTISTIC SPECTRUM, CONTRIBUTING TO HIM NOT FITTING IN? WITHIN HIS FIELD OF EXPERTISE, HE HAS BANGED HIS HEAD AGAINST WALLS FOR 30 YEARS OR MORE. HARDLY ANY BOTANISTS NOR SO-CALLED CONSERVATIONISTS, WHETHER FROM THE WEST OR INDIAN SUB-CONTINENT GIVE A DAMN ABOUT THE HIMALAYA, ITS FLORA NOR PEOPLE. FRAUD IS WIDESPREAD, YET ARGUABLY THE WORLD'S MOST FAMOUS NATURALIST, ENDORSES A FAKE INDIAN 'CONSERVATION' CHARITY, IS MOST AT FAULT.... HOPEFULLY, HE IS JUST GULLIBLE, DESPITE HIS LONGEVITY, NOT WORSE. CHRIS WOULD BE HIGHLY UNPOPULAR AND DISBELIEVED, SHOULD HE REVEAL THE NAME ...... YET WHY CANNOT CHRIS CONTACT THIS PERSON WITH THE EVIDENCE? SUCH A FIGURE SHOULD THEN BE MORTIFIED, PROMPTLY HAVE THE OFFENDING ARTICLE ABOUT CHRIS REMOVED BY THE BBC, WHOLEHEARTEDLY ENDORSING CHRIS CHADWELL'S CONSIDERABLE EFFORTS. CHRIS KNOWS THAT WILL NEVER HAPPEN ... WELL, CHRIS TRIED AND WAS IGNORED - HIS WISDOM DISMISSED. CHRIS HAD ASKED HIS SONS TO DELETE THE CONTENT OF THIS WEB-SITE ONCE HE DIED BUT HAS CHANGED HIS MIND - LET THE SELFISH, CRUEL IDIOTS READ THE WARNINGS IN THE FUTURE, WHEN IT IS TOO LATE TO REVERSE THE DAMAGE. CHRIS DOES NOT EXPECT ANY OF OFFENDING PUPILS AT HIS SECONDARY SCHOOL OR UNIVERSITY TO CONTACT HIM TO APOLOGISE.

For further details see: https://sites.google.com/a/shpa.org.uk/main/top-teachers-at-school