Dan Morris: It's all about the chemistry

Easily my furthest-flung regular reader, he’s an expat now based in Hong Kong who a while ago told me how he uses this column as one of his touchstones for home.

Once a year he’ll make the pilgrimage back to Blighty, and despite his understandably busy schedule during a brief visit home, last Wednesday we were able to squeeze in a pint together.

He’s always been a glorious totem to beautiful childhood days, and an evening of joyous reminiscence was relished.

It wasn’t until this week, however, and a parting text as he made his way back east, that he reawakened a true pearl of a memory that I’ve been grinning warmly about ever since.

Back when we were both in primary school, an inspired cohort of our teachers spearheaded a project that would immortalise our young voices and forever preserve the hopeful, happy souls of every pupil under their charge.

The little ‘uns were going to write a book, and every single kid in the school would be involved.

At the time, I was eight years old, and naturally this didn’t seem like a very big deal to me. We did fun creative writing exercises in our English classes all the time, and this sounded like it would just be more of the same. 

Yet, as I’ve got older, the wonderful significance of what we were being asked to do has become very real to me.

I’m very lucky to be able to do the job that I do, but many people will never have the opportunity to get their thoughts and feelings printed on paper for all to see.

What our clever school had arranged was for all of its charges’ hopes, dreams and innocence to be bound together, preserved forever, and put into the world so that their voices – at their absolute purest – would be heard, at least once.

I can’t think of a lovelier project for a group of children, nor a more beautiful gift 30 years later for their ageing eyes.

Old pal had dug out his treasured copy before leaving his parents’ abode and sent me a photo of my entry. 

The brief that many students had been given was ‘When I Grow Up’, and we were asked to write a few short paragraphs about our dream job. 

Understandably, there was a plethora of would-be Premiership football stars, ballerinas and billionaires. Yet alongside these, there were doctors, dentists, drivers and designers.

In a marked departure from my earliest aspirations of growing up to be either a dinosaur or Superted (if you know, you’ll know), I was very much in a ‘mad scientist’ phase when the book was published.

Consequently, my entry – a far more charming piece than those you are now used to – detailed my desire to perform wacky experiments and to ‘try not to blow myself up’. 

My father had been a chemist in his younger days, and I suspect this lovely stage was another bit of his influence rubbing off on me (along with Doc from Back To The Future, of course).

Suffice to say, my dream of a life in science didn’t stick for long after the book, ‘Happy Children’, was printed. However, the joy of seeing my name and work in its bound pages certainly did. 

I haven’t thought about it for years, yet now I smile and wonder just how much the excitement of my first ever byline subconsciously guided me into a life in newspapers, and a life I have always loved.

I wonder also how many other hacks of today found the first spark of their calling in such projects, and what they might have become were said spark never ignited.

I don’t know of any kids I shared the playground with having grown up to be journalists or writers, though I imagine there are bound to be some. I certainly hope so, anyway.

More than that, I hope that some of those budding F1 stars, rollercoaster testers and chocolatiers from three decades back got everything they ever wanted, and never forgot how to dream like children.

I pray that when my daughter is old enough, she gets to be a part of a similar school project. It’s been wonderful this week to reconnect directly with my eight-year-old self, and thank you, dear teachers, for being wise enough to know that, as grown-ups, this would be a more precious experience than anything we could ever have imagined.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to break out my chemistry set…