I’m not going to tell you my age. Though I’ve gradually become more comfortable about revealing my innermost feelings on this blog, there are some things that are still too private. Admittedly, some of my cultural references might give the game away, just a little.

Being an adrenaline junkie seems kind of cool.

You often see them on the telly. People who are jumping out of airplanes or off cliffs, or swimming with sharks, or speeding around racecourses, or doing other sorts of crazy things designed to get their hormone levels buzzing.

Like most other writers, I’m a bit of a sponge when it comes to writing advice. After all, it’s difficult to avoid. Wherever you travel on the internet, at some point as a writer you’re going to end up at some kind of writerly place, and you’re going to find writing advice coming at you from all directions. Seems like everybody out there is an expert on writing. Everybody can tell you how to write.

I like to use this blog to reflect on all the wonderful qualities that make me the strange and delightful person that I am. And one of those qualities, possibly one of my most defining qualities, is my fussiness.

I’ve always been fussy. When I was little, I used to drive my parents mad. I wouldn’t eat this and I wouldn’t eat that. No egg, no peas, no mashed potato – and the list went on and on and on.

Everybody knows the story of the little red engine. How it gets to the bottom of a big hill and it’s not sure whether it can climb it or not. But it keeps on saying, ‘I think I can, I think I can,’ and in the end it manages to get to the top.

Well today that’s me. Today I am the little red engine. And here is why.