I was born in Blackburn, Lancashire on Halloween, 1949, in a different world, where coal was delivered by horse and cart, as was sarsaparilla and ginger beer on a Saturday afternoon. Like any boy of my age, I wore sleeveless tank tops, which were short, and shorts which were long. I would prick tar bubbles in the street and long to be a mythical hero with winged sandals and the patronage of Athena. It was not to be. I had a blessedly traditional education at St John's C of E School and was a chorister though I never stunned with a top C, nor, as a boy scout did I have my arms poulticed with badges. However, I did well enough and had the scabbed knees of a proper boy instead. At eleven, I won a scholarship to QEGS where I found myself to be a very small fish, and where class came to matter quite painfully at first. There was some mediocre teaching but I was lucky enough to be nurtured from the third form onward by three inspirational masters. I was rather good at French and English, but abysmal at Maths. I loved Latin but found it unnecessarily hard and would go into reveries about how ancient Romans could possibly have spoken to each other with any fluency: ' I'll have those dormouse pies, please. Wait while I fiddle in my purse for a few sesterces and stick the verb at the end.' I did a lot of acting. My first role was as a milkmaid (in French) though I graduated to Prince Hal in Henry IV. I went up to Downing College, Cambridge to read English, having never been further south than Pwllelli. In the end I took a first, went on to do research and was awarded a Bye-fellowship. I was too young to appreciate all this treasure and no doubt prodigally wasted much of my youth. But that is not a new story. Life accelerates, or living it does. I went on teach at Leicester University. I moved to Wales and wrote a lot of stories. I taught in schools in London and was briefly Headmaster of a theatre school. I have taken risks, lost out and been on the skids in the suburbs. I have worked as a deputy hotel manager, a doctors' receptionist, office manager to a scaffolding firm, and as an auxiliary nurse in a geriatric ward. I now live in Lincoln under the shadow of the most beautiful cathedral in Europe. In Winter I can see it from the garden; it invites me to aspire.