When I was growing up, my Dad used to tell my older brother and I a lot of stories and was always getting and reading us books too.

It must have influenced me because by the age of 5 I loved telling, reading and writing stories. I would fill up exercise books as though they were novels and when I got older and learnt poetry I’d write some of my stories in the form of poems.

My stories were mostly fantastical, involving new worlds or undiscovered ones within our own such as a civilisation of toys with their own shops, trades and lives to be found under the floorboards of our house.

I would write with a passion, as if something was driving me, chasing me to get all my thoughts down. Later, when I had younger siblings, I’d tell them about these worlds I’d created in my stories.

When I became a teenager, I was gifted a plain notebook by a favourite primary school teacher and was given the idea of using it as a diary.

I approached journaling with enthusiasm and when I wrote about my daily exploits I felt as though was talking to a treasured friend.

But at around the age of 14 or so, I lost the bug for writing. My passion for story-telling just dried up. I put away my notepads and that was the end of that.

At sixth form college I focussed mainly on the sciences and although I did do English literature A’Level, an experience I had on that course put me off writing even more.

We were asked to do an essay about a blended family where the father was quite strict and the mother had died. For me, the subject was really emotional when it came to the essay I got a severe case of writers’ block and ended up writing about something else instead.

That episode seemed to kill off any last surviving bits of ‘Gani the story-teller.’

It’s interesting for me to look back and remember when I loved writing so much it made me breathless.

By the time I left college I’d long since left behind my habit of creative writing and then I continued going in the opposite direction, studying finance and engineering.

So, all these years later, it’s interesting for me to look back and remember when I loved writing so much it made me breathless.

Having been away from writing so long now I’d love to get back to it and report on the issues that I and other Disabled people face.

Perhaps then, the story-teller in me never did die.