I was convinced that I’d be playing to an audience of one.

How wrong I was.

Guests travelled astonishingly great distances: from Dorset, North Yorkshire, Staffordshire, Warwickshire, and London to share in the experience that I so wished my late parents could have witnessed: their youngest son invited to hold a launch for his second volume of memoirs at Nottingham’s esteemed Five Leaves Bookshop. Furthermore, the event was sold out and even had a waiting list should any last-minute availability arise.

I later learned of a trio of young women sitting with cocktails in a nearby bar, anxiously watching their mobile phones for a cancellation message from Five Leaves. Most fortuitously, one arose, and they hurried to join the celebration which my publisher live streamed to an online audience.

As I gawped at the surprise attendees, bouquets were thrust towards me through a lightning storm of flashbulbs. My childhood dreams of stardom which feature in my books had materialised.

First night nerves vaporised, and I was off. A congratultion  at the end of the evening thrilled me: “When are you a guest on the Graham Norton show? You’re a natural, born to do this…”

Following my reading from the chapter, ‘Late Afternoon Lamartine Street’, the interview began with astute questions from Ross Bradshaw. The evening soon evolved into a light-hearted event and what gave me the most pleasure was seeing friends and strangers mingling, chatting, laughing, all brought together by this man so cruelly dismissed by his school careers teacher: “You’ll never amount to much, Smalley.”