In September 1977, while we lived in Hong Kong, I moved from my primary school, the Peak school, to the prosaically named Island School. My new English teacher was called Mr O'Neill and I liked him hugely, immediately. He spoke about books and English in way that I found totally compelling. For a long time, for many years to come, I harboured a desire to be an English teacher, and that was entirely down to him.

Sometime during the year I was at Island School (before we returned to England), Mr O'Neill lent me three books: "Great Expectations', 'Shane' and 'The Chrysalids'. The last of these was science fiction of a dystopian type that I hadn't encountered before. Over the years I would read all of John Wyndham's books - including, of course, his best known 'The Day of the Triffids' - but 'The Chrysalids' is the one that I've returned to time and again.

Set in a post-apocalyptic world, there is little reference to the "Old People" because very little is known about them but one line always stuck in my head, right up to the present day, when the protagonist David, referring to some earthworks for (I guess) a railway line says "There was also the long bank, running away until it reached the hills and the huge scar that must have been made by the Old People when, in their superhuman fashion, they had cut away half a mountain in order to find something or other that interested them", particularly that part "in their superhuman fashion".

I'm not sure why that line struck me with such force; maybe it's because I realised I was one of those "superhumans". Of course, these days we have all sorts of diggers and equipment for the most amazing constructions but 'round where I live there are some amazing bits of work - for the railways as it happens - done before that hardware existed. There are the viaducts at Ribblehead and Ingleton, and also loads of embankments, where the trains used to run until Dr Beeching wielded his axe in the sixties.

I saw this one, today, when I was out running. And as soon as I saw it, that phrase about the superhumans popped into my head. Isn't it strange how that's stayed with me for the best part of forty years? I liked 'Shane', too, by the way, but I'm ashamed to admit I've never read 'Great Expectations'.