One of the characters I loved writing about was Postman Pat, his cat Jess and all his friends in Greendale.

He was created by John Cunliffe and I wrote the stories for a children’s comic, Buttons, every week for five years. My children were very young then so much of what I wrote was simply what we did – going to the library, getting lost, painting at nursery school – and what the Greendale farmers would be doing as the seasons moved on. I was never stuck for something to write but I did keep a couple of spare stories in my desk drawer for emergencies such as when I had a child ill in hospital, we went on holiday or something unexpected happened that stopped me writing.

The annuals and summer holiday specials were great fun to do as I got to make up all the puzzles and activities, the crafts and the baking page as well as the dice game in the middle. Somehow, in the middle of looking after my children I always managed to find the time to write, be it during their twenty minute afternoon nap or when they were safely tucked up in bed.

In total, I must have written around 250 stories about Pat and his friends in Greendale. I still have a soft spot for Pat and I certainly learned a lot writing about him. I had only a limited number of characters to use under each picture – about 140 funnily enough – and I’ve realised I was tweeting long before Twitter came into being!