Jim Sweetman writes...

I started writing when I was an English teacher back in the 1970s and I've enjoyed writing ever since. I liked teaching English and spent a lot of my career trying to reform the examination system in the subject - to not much avail given the way it has turned out.

After I finished university, my first thought was to convert some part-time work helping out at rock festivals into a job but relationships and family intervened and a geography teacher at a convent school in Kenilworth died, creating an opening for me. I never trained as a teacher, I only had A-level geography but in two terms I got my girls through their exams with flying colours and caught a teaching bug. The Reverend Mother said I was welcome to stay but, sensibly, I moved into the state system and taught English which I knew more about.

My first pieces of really extended writing were generated by the purchase of my first Amstrad computer and a dotmatrix printer. All of a sudden, it was possible to be a lazy writer knocking out text that could easily be altered. It helped with the examining work and it also led me into writing English textbooks - something which I did successfully for many years.

Finally retiring after many years working in the field of school improvement, or waging a guerrilla resistance against imposed government change, depending on how you want to look at it, I have now found a bit more time to write. I don't do it for money or the film rights but for fun.

I should acknowledge the influence of my dad, John Sweetman, who was a regular contributor to the Spectator and New Statesman literary competitions. He was much too holy and buttoned up to bare his soul in writing but his witty poems and pastiches informed by a wide knowledge of poetry were an inspiration. My doggerel owes a lot to him!

I hope you enjoy these pages. I foolishly let my daughters read one of my first efforts and they simply searched the text for rude words and had a good laugh. They are stern critics and they taught me not to take anything I write too seriously. It really is for fun.