I was once nearly arrested for dropping ham under a train

I went on a writing workshop the other week and it was really quite enjoyable. A lot of work based courses go into hilarously long-winded role playing elements to try and get over really obvious point.

Have you ever done that thing when you have to let the person standing behind you catch you when you fall back. It's about instilling trust etc. Only in the one I was in it ended up being about spinal injuries and personal injury claims.

Anyway, the writing course was about taking quite factual stuff and turning it into stories that could be told. Because we all love stories - especially if they involve killer robots, jetpacs and hotpants (my cybernaut-hover-pants books are going to sell like hotcakes when I get round to them). What was really nice was where we had to write down a profile of ourselves as a story as interestingly as possible.

So in mine I wrote down : I love ironing, I was a member of the first ever youth government and that I was nearly arrested for dropping ham under a train. All true. The first - it's so damn enjoyable and calming, the second - I was a swot at school and when I got older I resigned and thirdly.

Well. I dropped some ham under a train at Birmingham New Street when I was student. Some M&S processed ham. And I lay on the platform to pick it up, as I had very little money and it formed the basis of my tea. Within 3 minutes I was surrounded by british transport police and staff who dragged me up like I was a suicide case and then fished the ham out with a specialist pole for removing track debris (let's call it the 'ham clamp'). After a dressing down and being shouted at I was allowed on the train and my ham was released from the ham clamp.

All of this I had quite forgotten until that course and now I think back (it happened in 1994) and really wonder if processed ham was really worth all that fuss.

Course it was, it was M&S.

Hurrah for the ham clamp.