Once upon a time I knew that young man in the picture above. Knew him pretty well, in fact.

He was 17 then, living in Leeds, where he’d grown up, sitting at a friend’s house, smoking a cigarette, wearing the jumper his mother had knitted when he was 12 or 13, one that still fitted, if a big snug.

His hair was probably almost as long as it would ever get. Much more at the back and it would curl up – very annoying, it made him self-conscious.

Even back then, he knew there were two things he wanted to do in life. Either be a musician or a writer. He’d sold his bass, bought an acoustic guitar and become a singer-songwriter. Not a particularly good one, it’s worth saying. He also wrote poems. Did they have the depth and insight he’d hoped? Looking back over them, no they didn’t. The were all sixth form learning and pretension, not a one of them worth saving from a fire. Three years later he’d write a novel that took its cue – took everything, really – from Richard Brautigan, as bad a pastiche as you can imagine.

He had hopes, he had dreams. In the top stream of grammar school, he imagined a clear path ahead to his goals. He’d been encouraged to believe that, as if it was his right.

He had a rude awakening ahead. Very mediocre A-level results, not enough to get into university to study English. Instead, he panicked and opted for teacher training college, which welcome him with wide open arms. But a year would convince him he wasn’t intended to teach kids.

That was in the future, though. A very winding path lay ahead that would take him back and forth between continents. Sitting there, he didn’t know that in four years he’d move to the US and live there for the next 30 years. A life full of surprises.

In the picture, though, I wonder what he’s thinking as he eyes up the camera.

I keep looking, but I can’t find a way into his mind at that age. Maybe that’s what growing older does to us. Piece by piece it divorces up from the person we’d once been. We remake ourselves many times over in a life, some for better, some for worse.

So yes, hey Chris, tell me what you were thinking as you sat there 55 years ago.

While you’re here…the second Cathy Marsden thriller, The Faces Of The Dead, will be coming out in April. If you’d like to pre-order it from your favourite bookshop, I’d be very grateful. It’s very good, I can guarantee it. Whether that young man might think so, I’m not sure. In those days he was very snobbish about literature…maybe he grew up a little.