Let’s face it, if I had just given birth to an actual baby, you might already have heard about it. Mine is somewhat different but it also involves a moment of conception, a long period of gestation over several months, followed by quite a challenging birth when, with the help of a wonderful Irish friend, Siobhan, who acted as my secret midwife, my baby was brought into the world.

We’re supposed to go to school to learn the 3Rs, but only two of them ever really appealed to me. Reading and writing. Words. I loved words. I did not love numbers and they didn’t like me. I now have a granddaughter who struggles with Maths and my heart goes out to her, because, like me she was an early, fluent reader and she loves it when I read to her, or more often these days, she reads to me.