EMMA COWING: After 10 years, dear reader, my final column... (but definitely not my last word!)

This will be my final column in the Scottish Daily Mail. It feels strange even to type these words, perhaps because I’ve loved it so much. In 27 years of journalism, writing this page is the most fulfilling thing I’ve ever done. Why?

Mainly because of you, the readers.

Over the past ten years many of you have written to me, often wittily, sometimes kind and yes, occasionally cross, on a huge range of subjects. 

We’ve debated Scottish independence, the comings and goings at the Scottish parliament, whether a gin and tonic really was the best lockdown drink, and the merits of high heels versus flats.

There have been disagreements, too, while some of you have done a stellar job in ­keeping me right. 

One time I mis-identified a Corbett as a Munro, and while the man who wrote was originally rather irked about this, by the end of the exchange we were promising to meet up out on the hills. ­

Others have shared alternative viewpoints that hadn’t even occurred to me, opening up ­fascinating debates and discussions.

One reader, with whom I’d built up a friendship, emailed me from his hospice bed to say goodbye. It was a privilege to have been in his thoughts at the end, even though we had never met.

When my father died, and I wrote about the strange, untethered grief of losing a parent as an adult, more than 50 of you wrote to share your own stories of parental love and loss. 

When my cat died during the pandemic, I received cards of condolence and a beautiful portrait, painted by a reader, of my much beloved feline friend.

Old connections were re-forged too. One woman wrote asking if my mother had taught in a certain school back in the 1960s, because if so, my Mum had been her favourite teacher, and made such a huge impression that she had never forgotten her. 

I put them in touch, and they wrote to each other several times. She even sent my husband and me a horseshoe for luck at our wedding.

So why am I leaving? Well, after a 27-year career, I am walking away from journalism to become a full-time novelist. 

It feels like an exciting, terrifying choice to make, and there are many times I have doubted myself.

But earlier this year I was lucky enough to secure a publishing deal, and my first book The Show Woman, a historical novel very loosely inspired by the life of my great aunt Violet, a trapeze artist and bareback horse rider, will be published next May. 

It will come as little surprise to learn that the idea first came to me when I was researching my ­family history for this very column.

But I’ll be honest. It all still feels a little unreal. Journalism is what I’ve done my entire adult life. It’s been my career, my touchstone and, often, my identity.

I was a teenager when I started, working in a newsroom without email or internet and where the library was down a flight of stairs, not on a web page. 

There was a smoking room in the building, as well as colleagues who lamented the days when you could still smoke at your desk. 

When one took me to the famous Press Bar in Glasgow, I was served a glass of wine in a half pint glass.

Since then the world around us and the media landscape itself have shifted. The internet has changed how we consume news. 

The world has become a harsher, more frightening place. I’ve been in this job long enough to have covered the death of Princess Diana, 9/11 and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and yet the instability of this post-pandemic world feels quite unlike anything I’ve experienced before.

I’ve been lucky enough to work on some extraordinary stories in my time as a journalist. 

I’ve covered wars and elections, done some snazzy foreign reporting as well as a lot of standing around in fields/high streets/riverbanks/city centres trying valiantly to find a story and wishing I’d worn sensible shoes.

I've interviewed four First Ministers, three Prime Ministers and one Taliban leader, and if you buy me a glass of wine I might even tell you which one proposed. 

I’ve knocked many doors, asked too many impertinent questions, been lucky enough to interview my teen crush (Christian Slater) and three of my comedy idols (Ben Elton, Stephen Merchant and Sue Perkins).

But the stories I found the most rewarding were not with the celebs, the politicians or even the royals.

It was the mother of a 13-year-old who took her own life after viewing self-harm images online and was determined no one else’s child would suffer the same fate.

The elderly lady in a Dumbarton flat convinced her mother had faked her own death during the Clydebank Blitz 75 years before.

The work I did on the 1970s child abuse scandal in Scottish legal circles which sparked an eight-year police investigation.

The world has always been, and will always be, full of stories. Stories worth telling. ­Stories worth shining a light on. Stories for which it is worth – more now than ever – ­buying a paper.

A journalist is nothing without her ­colleagues. I’ve been lucky enough to work with the best and brightest journalists in the country, the team that builds this newspaper from scratch every day, who have taught me so much about writing, and deadlines, and how to tell stories that connect and resonate with our loyal ­readers. 

I will miss them all, but I know I’m leaving the profession in safe hands.

So thank you to everyone who has lingered over this column on a Saturday morning, who has written to tell me I’ve put into words what they’ve long believed but couldn’t quite articulate, or simply to share a joke. 

I’m honoured to have been a small part of your weekends. Now, I’m off to tell my own stories, and wear more sensible shoes. I really hope you’ll keep reading.

Catwalk queen will never go out of style

You know you’ve made it when the V&A dedicates an entire exhibition to your career. 

Naomi Campbell’s Naomi In Fashion opened last night charting the supermodel’s rise to fame through various outfits – and even the pair of Vivienne Westwood shoes she wore when she took a tumble on the catwalk in 1993.

Just goes to show that staying power – and a sense of humour about your mistakes – never goes out of style.

A poll suggests the SNP could be left with just 15 seats at the General Election. It’s a long way from the heady days of 2015, when the party won 56 seats and ushered in an era for Scotland punctuated by endless discussion of independence and a fair amount of incompetence, too. 

Let’s hope this latest vote means the promise of brighter days ahead for ­Scotland, if not, perhaps, for the SNP.

Could summer finally be on the way? It’s certainly been warmer the past few days. I’ve even – gasp – ventured out without a coat on a few recent occasions. 

Of course as I write this I’m gazing out at murky skies and the rain has started hitting the window. Oops. I should have kept my mouth shut. 

All eyes on the Scotland national football team tomorrow in Stuttgart as they take on Hungary. It follows a poor start against Germany, and a more than respectable draw against Switzerland.

Whether we will make it out of the group stages remains to be seen. But on the strength of what we’ve seen so far, I’m pretty sure Scotland will take home the gong for most enthusiastic rendering of the national anthem.

The sound of thousands of fans belting out Flower of Scotland on Wednesday night was a rousing, moving sight. Good luck, lads. If we play as well as we sing, it should be a walkover.