Anybody out there?

Writing this blog has become part of my daily routine in my new job (since March) of being a writer and publisher. I am painfully aware that no one reads it but as You can see I am undaunted by failure.

When my career as one of Britain's top civil servants drew to a glorious close, I took a job working in a block of flats as a sort of temporary handyman. I was due to start teacher training and that was sufficiently intense for me to give up writing for a year.

This was in the days of sending your manuscript off to publishers in a manila envelope. I had a stack of them at the ready and although I wasn't writing I continued to send Neil Barrie off. Surely someone would recognise my genius?

Sub-consciously I think I knew that I was just adding to my stock of rejection letters every time I slipped the envelope into the post box and yet I had hope. I believed that no news was good news, when in fact no new was no news...

At least in those days, the publishers sent you a rejection letter. Later, in the era of email, you often didn't get any reply at all.

So, we're into 1997 now. I was training to be a science teacher but still had high hopes for Neil Barrie.