The world from my window

Forty years ago (I can't believe it's forty years ago), I entered with great trepidation the Portakabin of Life as part of the Mirror Group Newspapers training scheme in Plymouth. I was eighteen and rather nervous. I didn't really feel like I belonged there, alongside clever graduates from Oxford and similarly lofty establishments. I was a comprehensive school girl from Somerset. But English was the only subject I was ever any good at. And since the age of about nine or ten, I'd wanted to be a journalist. I put that down to having watched the wisecracking Rosalind Russell in the 1940s film His Girl Friday . I wanted to be like her - smart, sassy, witty, independent. I also wanted to wear those suits. And maybe catch the heart of Cary Grant. The school's careers adviser said journalism was a competitive business and I'd be better off in retail management or train to be a librarian. I can't sell anything for toffee and I'm not particula...

They say you should never go back. But I did at the weekend, going back to where my grandfather was born in 1891 and where, in 1979, I began my training as a journalist. Gramp was an adventurer and a spinner of yarns. I imagine him as a small boy gazing out across Plymouth Sound and wondering what lay beyond it. He ended up in Australia where he was a sheep drover and tamer of horses before becoming an ANZAC, fighting at Gallipoli and the Somme. Plymouth's not everyone's cup of tea but I like it very much. Five years ago, my old trainee colleagues had a thirty year reunion, which I wrote about here . There's even a picture of me on that blog post at my New Romantic best. There were fewer of us this time round, with various people bottling out and giving excuses, but it didn't matter, I enjoyed every minute of it, starting with the train journey to Pymouth. And then a feeling of euphoria as I alighted from the train. I checked into the hote...