Enid Blyton inspired love of reading and writing

Three-year-olds might still long to be ballet dancers (common that one amongst the tutu tinies) and toughie little lads will say they still want to be a train driver, but those childhood dreams don't always survive.

Sometimes, it's because a better option emerges, or the wannabe dancer grows into a 6ft amazon, and the lad with the train driver dreams turns out to be a natural supermarket manager instead.

But yesteryear's young visionary may also be influenced by someone they are close to, or a big name of the day, who they admire.

Come in Enid Blyton.

Yes, folks, it was Enid who gave me the real kick-start into writing – as if she was there looking over my youthful shoulder. I was a keen reader as a kid and thanks to mum, along with the classics (and later on Agatha Christie mysteries) all the great lady's books from Noddy to the Famous Five found their way into a Christmas stocking or birthday parcel.

I often red long into the night, under the bedclothes and by torchlight.

But it was the hairbrush which clinched the deal. I won it in an Enid Blyton poetry competition when I was about 12. And with that gentle innocence of childhood, thought the door really had opened into a brave new world. It was handy that English was my favourite subject, that I loved researching things and bossed friends into taking part in little plays penned by me.

So when the time came to seriously consider my future, it was a no-brainer.

I wrote to the local newspapers and the managing director of one wrote back saying he'd just sacked somebody and saw my intervention as an omen. I was invited to go and see him. In half an hour on a Saturday morning, I'd got a job.

My grammar school headmaster thought it was akin to drawing on the pavement for a living and my granny suggested a job in the office of a new factory. Thankfully for me, I stuck to my guns.

Years later at Enid's centenary, I interviewed her daughter Gillian Baverstock and told her my tale. She clapped her hands and said she thought her mother would have approved. That's all I needed to know.