Some of the story so far…

Almost 60 years ago, I was scolded by a primary school teacher – a nun by the name of Sister Aiden who could be both stern and kind – for being cheeky in class. After ticking me off, she smiled in exasperation, wagged her finger at me and declared, “You are going to be a writer. I want you to send me a copy of your first book.”

I have been a writer all my life, just not any books. So Sister Aiden went to her heaven without me fulfilling her request. I could only plead that I never found the right story. At the age of 60, that story found me. So I’m writing that book now and will visit her grave – which I have visited once already to apologise for my sin of omission – and leave a copy with her once it is published. And it will be, somehow.

It isn’t that I have led a lazy life. If anything, I was kept too busy with a successful career or other personal projects to have time to write a book. Check my LinkedIn profile as evidence.

Then, at the age of 60, I was told that I had actually been adopted as a baby. Coping with that shock was challenging enough – after all, my family on both sides had kept it a secret from me for six decades – but within two years I had also been made redundant in a role I had hoped would see out my career to retirement. It seems I was found to be “unwanted”- surplus to requirements – at both ends of my life. And so describing the story of what happened to me needs a book, a memoir.