I’m still trying to recover from two school events in Newcastle last week. Why? Well, it’s simple: the ideas the groups came up with, their enthusiasm and humour, their general all round brilliance, astonished me.

One girl, Emily, stood out in particular. “I’ve kind of written a book” she said. “Would you mind reading my favourite bit?” Emily is 14. In her hands was probably 100 pages of typed text.

I read the ‘favourite’ bit. I read it again. I eventually picked my jaw from off the floor.

Emily clearly has the writing bug bad. At 14, she’s writing stuff I’d be proud to come up with now. She’s writing books in her spare time, and I don’t mean just a few pages, but reams of the stuff. Ideas seem to fall out of her like rain from a storm cloud. And I’d put money on her ending up on the shelves at Waterstones.

Amazing really. Not only to I get to run around like an idiot in front of kids, talking about the one thing I serious love – writing – I get to meet the best-sellers of tomorrow.

Sometimes, I have to pinch myself to make sure I’m not dreaming… “Ouch!” Nope, definitely not dreaming…

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