But instead, I spent the next hour curled up with embarrasment. They were awful - although they did make good firelighters. But it got me thinking about what the first story I've ever wrote might have been. And from nowhere, an old memory came to me about an early attempt at story writing. It couldn't have been my first, but I reckon it was the first that got a reaction.

I must have been around 14 and I had an end-of-year English exam. There was a story part to the exam and I had to write a story, which completed a given opening paragraph. That paragraph went something like -

Jim and Brian listened to the weather forecast, but the forecaster predicted that gales would hit the coast that afternoon and nobody should venture out to sea. Jim was distraught as he and Brian had planned to go sailing that afternoon, but Brian didn't believe the forecast and said they should go anyhow.

A few weeks after this test, the class got their marked papers back, along with an explanation of what everyone had done right, or wrong. Apparently, there were four possible stories you could write from this opening. They were:

1. Jim and Brian go sailing, but they both drown.

2. Jim and Brian go sailing, but Jim drowns.

3. Jim and Brian go sailing, but Brian drowns.

4. Jim and Brian go sailing, but neither drown.

Some of these stories were better than others.

From memory, option 2 was the best. Because then the reckless boy survives and his cautious friend dies. This provides a poignant message to all reckless boys that ignoring sound advice can get your friends killed and the experience will leave you to regret your recklessness for the rest of your life.

Not so good was having the reckless Brian die. This was an obvious thing to do, but the message was ham-fisted.

Having them both die was very dull because neither boy can live to learn an important lesson (although, I think, this was the story most of the class wrote, and they usually crammed in the maximum amount of gory detail.)

Having them both survive was considered very bad as that implied they wouldn't learn anything from the experience.

The story you chose to write governed your mark, and those that chose the right story were well pleased.

I was not well pleased. I got the bottom mark in the class. In fact, the teacher claimed he'd given me the lowest score he'd ever allocated to anyone in his eighty-five years of teaching English.

I got such a low score because I hadn't considered the issue of there being only four possible stories to write. So, I wrote the fifth version of the story. The one only an complete idiot would write:

5. Jim and Brian don't go sailing.

In my story, Jim and Brian listened to the weather forecast, debated going out sailing, but the careful Jim persuaded the reckless Brian that the gales would come, after all. And so, they did something completely different instead.

In my view, I had done what I was told to do. I'd started a story with the given words, but the teacher was unimpressed with that viewpoint.

That was bad enough, but I compounded my error by writing a story that was so stupid the teacher felt obliged to read it out in class. And I got a reaction. All of it was laughter, and if I'd meant the story to be funny, I wouldn't have been as embarrassed as I was.

My story was this:

Jim and Brian decided that if it was going to be windy at the coast, they'd go to London for the day, but a madman hijacked the coach they were on and demanded a million pounds or he'd blow up the coach. And to stop anyone foiling his evil scheme, he put a device on the steering wheel that ensured that if the coach's speed dropped below fifty miles an hour, the coach would blow up.

The coach hurtled around the streets of London with the petrol gauge dropping ever lower, but then the gale arrived (Mentioning the gale stopped me getting 0%). This made driving difficult for the madman and, with all his attention on the road, the passengers had a chance to free themselves.

Jim and Brian tried different rescue plans. Jim's plan was sensible, involving an inflatable dinghy, but failed. Brian's plan was reckless, and involved giving the madman really bad road directions that sent the coach hurtling towards a cliff that was obligingly in the centre of town and just at the right moment opening his London road map out in front of the madman so that he couldn't see where he was going.

But when all the passengers had bailed out of the coach in Jim's inflatable dinghy, that left Brian to die a hero's death when he tried a high speed petrol stop at a petrol station. I believe the last word in my story was, 'Boom', probably with a lot of o's in the middle.

After coming bottom of the class, I sulked a bit, but ultimately resolved to carry on writing what I wanted to write instead of what I was supposed to write. The result was several more years of failed English exams and a lifetime of never succeeding in those short story competitions that give you an opening line.

But not to worry. I got a reaction, and that's all you can ever hope for. And my mate, Keanu, reckoned it was the best story he'd ever read.