People sometimes ask me what it felt like, sitting on the other side of that table.

They expect me to say it felt like revenge. That I'd been waiting five years for that moment. It didn't feel like that. Not really.

It felt like finally understanding something.

When James said I was too ordinary, he meant it as the worst thing he could say. He meant small. Unimportant. Going nowhere.

And for a long time, walking home in the rain that night, I believed him.

But I was wrong to believe him. And he was wrong about what ordinary means.

Ordinary is my dad, standing under the cranes for twenty-five years. Ordinary is my mum, serving dinners to five hundred children a day. Ordinary is Morag at reception, who notices everything. Ordinary is Dougie in his one good jacket, and Kirsty from Granton, and three hundred kids running into a swimming pool.

Ordinary people built the docks in the first place. And ordinary people built them again. I'm one of them. I'm proud to be.

On my desk, there's a photo of the blue cranes at night. And on the side of crane number four, if you look closely, you can just read the words.

Build it with the people who live here.

I still make the tea for every interview.

And I always, always look up.