*I have no favourite football team. I would struggle to name a football team. Not true: if invited, I would very quickly name a team something like “Overpaid”.

But next week I am spending a day in a school for the first time since before the pandemic, and the subject is non-fiction. At some point before lunch I am going to point out to approximately 30 pupils from something 5 schools, that they have never heard of me before. That they are unlikely to ever hear of me again.

Yet they also now know how to find out something about me.

The thing I will ask them to find out about me over lunch is what my favourite football team is. I can think of two ways for them to find out and this is one of them. The other is to ask me. I am so hoping that someone will just ask me.

Being invited into a school is a privilege that I take extremely seriously. It’s on my mind a lot and if I’m saying much of this in order to have something the pupils can find online with a little effort, I’m also saying it to you because I am an idiot.

There I will be, next Tuesday, telling writers that you can always ask anyone, anything. That it is supremely easy to just ask them. And here I was last Tuesday, maybe Wednesday, telling someone else that since they wanted a particular thing from someone, they should ask.

I hope it was last Tuesday because that’s a nice balance of Tuesdays and because yesterday comes between them. And yes.

Yesterday, I had to ask someone for something. And I found it very hard.

Fair broke my arms trying to type when the stakes were so unnaturally high. I say unnatural because whatever the reason it was all so charged for me, it isn’t for them.

Maybe that’s what I should really be telling people next week. Whoever you’re asking is far less concerned, far less bothered, far less interested in the fact you’re asking, than you think. For good or bad reasons, for whatever reason, your mountain is not theirs.

So, I know this again and again, ask.

There’s a producer I want to contact and I’ve only got a US postal address for his company. I’m wondering whether I should just write a letter.

And now, talking to you, I realise there is nothing to stop my doing it but me, no one to say I can’t but me.

Also, it occurs to me that with my handwriting, I should probably type.