Of course I read every book within range but one such indulgence was singular. It was called The Rockingdown Mystery. In the numeric progression of Enid Blyton, this was from the middle stage, between The Secret Seven and The Famous Five and there was a spooky old house and things that went thump in the night. All of this appealed to me—the adventure and the characters, the illustrations that headed every chapter, and the very notion of the book itself. And somewhere in the middle of it all, the fatal thought occurred for the first time.
I want to do that!
Oh woe!
    I had a spare exercise book and did a title page—The Quiet Summer, I decided to call it—and list of contents even though there weren’t any yet but I knew how they would go—Introduce the Characters. The holidays. A seaside place. A Mystery. Investigating. The Mysterious Stranger. The Cave. Captured. Escape. The Flight. The Mysterious stranger turns out to be a police inspector and you have cracked his case. The baddies captured. I did the illustration at the first chapter heading and that was the best bit and then off I went describing the mystery only something went wrong and I came to the bit where the baddies are caught on page six and it was ended. I didn’t even get to draw the Chapter Two illustration. My first book, like so many others, was such a disappointment. To this day I never figured out what went wrong, but plainly there was more to this book writing business than met the eye.