I've got a grasshopper personality. You know the type, I bounce into something with both feet, make a lot of noise, and then bounce out leaving everyone a bit confused. So I knew that I didn't want to commit myself to joining such a dedicated team. But I did want to help and support them.

I enjoy our parish magazine but I felt that something was missing. Over a cuppa after a service one Sunday, I was talking to the editor of said publication and bemoaning some life crisis or other, enjoying her laughter and needless to say, making the story funnier the more she laughed. I enjoyed the conversation, but thought nothing more of it.

Shortly after that I bought a computer. At the urging of a friend, I wrote down a saga of some unimportant event that refused to go smoothly and proffered it to our editor.

The rest, as they say, is history....

As I typed, I found a really cool font called 'miriam's hand' that I tended to use when creating the articles. Over time, I adapted the name Miriam for this fictional alter-ego who developed with the articles.

Miriam is a thirty-something mum with a couple of real kids. The kids don't behave like something out of tv sitcom (no offence to tv sitcoms, but no real kids are either that tidy or that rude). I have no idea whether she is married, single, divorced or what. Certainly an adult partner never appears, but that means very little, I rather think it's up to the reader to decide!

Does she have faith? I think not. She may have had some contact with God in her life, but she reminds me of many people (myself included) before they accept the unfair advantage of having Christ as best friend.

Yes she has some of my characteristics, and the themes in each piece are loosely based on real events that have happened to me, but somehow when I sit to type them Miriam takes over, and the saga that is her life takes its' own route. More than once, the final sentence has been as much of a surprise to me as it is to the reader.

S.A.M.