Teaching is like planting seeds.
You never know what will blossom, but when it does the results can be beautiful.
I had a moment this week which, completely unexpectedly, reduced me to tears.
I was teaching at the wonderful Winchester I Am In Print Writing Festival.
It’s back after a three-year plague induced absence, and it was so good to catch up with old friends and feel the warm embrace of the writing community again.
Winchester is also a beautiful city to visit:
I was having supper, when a man sat down and told me he had joined a course on crime writing I ran at Winchester about five years ago.
I vaguely remembered him - Mark is his name - but it was what he had to say next which astonished me.
He told me the course had been so useful that he carried the notes from it everywhere.
When he was stuck he would refer to them, and they would usually help him work through the problem.
I smiled and thanked Mark, but wasn’t really sure whether to believe what he said.
People in the writing world do tend to be very lovely and kind.
I think he sensed that, and, with a flourish, produced the notebook, along with all he had written about the course, those years ago.
And here’s the proof!
It was just a small thing, but it will stay with me, as these moments sometimes do.
Because little legacies can make the heart glow.
Thinking back, I managed a few useful things when I was at the BBC:
Remedying injustices, righting wrongs, sticking up for the small person against the big institutions who so sadly often behave awfully.
But as for where I am now...
I couldn’t be happier than with this stage of life, the teaching I do, and the difference it makes.
That's whether helping writers to get published, students to succeed in life, or businesses to boom.
If you do your best to leave a legacy on your journey through life, you never know when you'll come across one of the lovely blossoms of your work.
And what a moment it is when it happens.
