I SHOULD OPEN BY STATING THAT Ceeteejackson.com IS THE SOLE AUTHORIZED HOME OF MY WRITING.

Sheesh!

I’ve changed.

A lovely thing happened to me at the weekend. (See? There I go, already. I’d never have opened a paragraph with that phraseology in the past. I’m a bloke, for goodness sake. ‘Lovely things’ only happen to girls / women, not grumpy, cynical old geezers.

(At best, a ‘lovely thing’ would have merited the accolade of being ‘OK, I suppose,’ as I’d have deliberately played down the actual lovelyness of the ‘thing.’)

Anyway, I was at a school reunion on Saturday afternoon and evening. It was the third such event my cohorts have arranged, although this time, with us all now being of a certain age, it was agreed an early start / early finish was more appropriate.

The occasion for celebration was the 50th anniversary of most of us leaving school.

A few of those attending have kept in touch with each other over the years, and of course the advent of social media encouraged some distant contact. But in the main, we had not seen many of our childhood friends for fifty years at least.

One such pal from the past had travelled the length of the country to be in attendance. He left school a year before me, so it was just over fifty-one years since we’d last met.

I clocked him and his younger sister immediately and we quickly re-introduced ourselves. As we chatted, he drew out from the bag he was carrying, a copy of my book ‘A Space Hopper Killed My Hamster … amusing tales of growing up in the ’60s & ’70s.’

The book, as I may have bored you with before, is mainly centred on my schooldays and later teen-years in Bearsden, a leafy suburb of Glasgow. Although the stories will reflect the antics and experiences of any child of that time, be that in the UK or indeed the western world, the book has a particular relevance for everyone in that room on Saturday.

And so, my pal’s younger sister had bought him a copy of the book some months previous.

That in itself was nice to know. But the reason he’d gone to the extent of bringing it down to our get-together, was this: his adult son has a ‘learning condition’ (please excuse me if I’ve used the incorrect term) but certain things stick with him, and my pal had explained to him why he was going away to this event, and described who he was going to meet from his the days of his youth.

He knew his son would excitedly ask if he’d met the author of this book and so, I was asked to sign it for him. And have a photo taken.

(I’m not built for this minor celebrity status – I always feel so awkward when asked to do this, but of course I was happy to do so.)

Anyway, it was only later that evening when I staggered back into my home and bored the arse off my wife, regaling her with tales of the evening, that I realised how much that wee instance meant to me.

In recent months, I have become very disillusioned with writing. The publication process; the never ending amount of e-mails from marketing / promotion scammers; the over-complicated and costly Amazon Ads, without which it’s so difficult to have your book noticed amongst the millions of others, the bleedin’ tax man looking for a cut … it can all become so demorailising.

But in that moment, and I don’t mind admitting, as I recounted the detail and found myself tearing up a little, I realised just why I do continue writing. (The emotional thing is a combination of seven pints of lager and a common after-effect experienced by others like me who have survived a Sudden Cardiac Arrest).

It’s not the money. It’s not the ‘fame.’ I don’t chase either.

I write because my efforts make people smile.

And that, quite honestly, means more to me than anything.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go get a tissue – the air conditioning in here seems to be making my eyes water. 😉🤣

I really am a soppy old git.

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