My writing is as if upon a steamed mirror. Today was the first read through of an early draft of my stage adaptation of Benjamin Zephaniah’s Refugee Boy. When the actors at West Yorkshire Playhouse in Leeds read my work in the rehearsal rooms it feels as if they're looking through the words at me.

Slightly exhausted I arrive back in London too late to attend Andrea Levy’s Booker Prize party but in time for home sweet home. Andrea is very close friends with La Journaliste. How many of the great authors went to university I wonder – at least as many as didn’t? And where do I put that question mark. Is it right where it is. And would a degree have made me more certain. Who knows. Indeed.

News just in. Though the information is not as yet on the University of Huddersfield’s website it is permissible to announce The Lemn Sissay PhD Scholarship for Care Leavers. The recipient of the first Scholarship is Belinda Bluff. Congratulations Belinda Bluff. There are no other universities in the UK that provide a PHD scholarship specifically for Care Leavers so you are making history. There are many ways to engage with education. University is one of them. In all its forms education assists a person to experience the langauge of living as if it were written on a steamed mirror.