I was born in Suffolk in 1953 in a thatched cottage that had no electricity, which might have been good preparation for a career writing misery lit were it not for the fact that my childhood was unremittingly happy. My parents were always there for me, though they probably found it rather wearisome that I was always there for them. 

After six years at the village school I somehow muddled through the eleven-plus and was packed off to the boys’ grammar school, where we spent much of our time thinking about the girls’ high school on the other side of town. A few weeks after I left school a co-educational comprehensive was opened, and that knack for perfect timing has never deserted me. 

At Hull University I did my best to make myself unemployable by doing a BA in American Studies. As it happened I got a job immediately after graduation; for fourteen months I worked as a dustman before taking a step backwards in career terms by training to be a teacher. 

Having singularly failed to slake the thirst for knowledge of Essex boys and girls, I decided to move on. Six years after the Carnation Revolution of 1974 brought an end to a particularly nasty regime in Portugal, I showed up to do my bit for democracy and freedom. In Oporto I worked at a language school that promoted itself with the horrendous slogan “Speak a little, live a little”, which the students converted to “Speak a little, pay a lot”. Indeed, two of my colleagues decided to open their own, slightly less expensive school, and a decade later they employed a young woman who had a daft idea for a novel set in a boarding school for witches and wizards. 

Next stop was Madrid, and that sense of timing worked for me again as my stay in that fine city coincided with an attempted coup d’état led by a certain Lieutenant-Colonel Antonio Tejero. 

In Milan in 1982 most of my work involved going into companies to teach staff on the premises. One of my students was an immigrant from Argentina, so we spent many a joyous hour chatting merrily about the Falklands War and the Sun’s “Gotcha!” headline. 

Strangely, the school in Oporto was prepared to have me back, and in the role of headteacher no less. My leadership qualities had an impact on staff morale, and before I left I discovered that two of the teachers had obtained the capital they required to set up their own school. 

I wasn’t in Rome long enough to do too much damage, unless one counts the collapse of an apartment block close to the one in which I was living. Then it was sunny Sardinia and the city of Cagliari, a name that most Brits mispronounce in such a way that it sounds slightly vulgar to Italians. I had a six-month contract to teach the staff of Alitalia, a company that has gone from weakness to weakness since my brief association with them. That was 34 years ago. Settling down, buying a house, getting married… it sort of creeps up on you.