A RETIRED teacher and vicar has penned a book filled with the amusing adventures and misadventures from his childhood.

Andrew Woodhouse is enjoying his retirement in Bedale, North Yorkshire, where he has worked as a primary school headteacher and, later, as an Anglican priest, and said he has finally finished a book he started years ago about his younger life.

He said: “It starts with my childhood in rural Suffolk during the Second World War. I had a wonderful childhood, and it was interlaced with many comical events and has been full of surprises.

“Each chapter is full of humour and stories about things I used to get up to, or that happened to me, and I also link forward to event that have happened in my adult life too.”

Mr Woodhouse said as the son of a priest he moved around the country a lot, and wherever he went he always seemed to find trouble.

“When I was a headteacher, I would laugh because when children were sent to me for being naughty it often reminded me of things I got up to,” he said.

He added that growing up during the war had its perks.

“I used to quite like to see the Luftwaffe coming over, because it always seemed to happen when I was meant to be doing PE, which I didn’t like, so I could go and read a book in the shelter,” he said.

He also includes humours anecdotes from his life as an adult, when he was being ordained and was also the organised at his church.

As well as his various careers, Mr Woodhouse is also a well-known artist, having studied at Leeds College of Art.

He came to Bedale in the 1970s to teach, and later as a priest in Thornton Watlass.

  • The book is available from The Bookshelf, in Bedale.