So there I was, coming to the end of a 30 minute telephone conversation with Celia from the planning dept at the local council. To be fair I felt almost overwhelmed with the amount of red tape and bureaucratic nonsense we'd been talking about, but she had shown the patience of a saint and now the light was beginning to dawn. She asked me for my email address, which I duly gave..... "Malcolm Castle?" she asked. "You're not the Malcolm Castle who writes the books about life in the fire service are you?". Well, I was really chuffed. It doesn't happen all that often yet, but when someone does recognise me because of my books, it's a wonderful feeling.
We then started to chat like old friends and then discovered that we'd talked before. We both walk our dogs along the same route and have chatted a number of times....... How Bizarre!!!!!
Of course, what this also means is that I now appear to have that rare and much sort after thing...... A friend in the Planning Dept!!!!!!