My wife cleaning.

The X Factor (wondering about song choices) and watching TV. I’m a night person, and don’t go to sleep until 3am or 4am.

One after the other, thoughts come banging in – and it’s no sleep for you tonight, dearie.

My solution has been to scroll through my life, my thoughts, my fantasies, my memories, mis-memories, and the like until I have chanced upon events, people, or narratives that I can employ to divert my mind from the body in which it is encased. These mental exercises have to be interesting enough to hold my attention and see me through an intolerable itch in my inner ear or lower back; but they also have to be boring and predictable enough to serve as a reliable prelude and encouragement to sleep. It took me some time to identify this process as a workable alternative to insomnia and physical discomfort and it is by no means infallible. But I am occasionally astonished, when I reflect upon the matter, at how readily I seem to get through, night after night, week after week, month after month, what was once an almost insufferable nocturnal ordeal. I wake up in exactly the position, frame of mind, and state of suspended despair with which I went to bed—which in the circumstances might be thought a considerable achievement.

Being mum to my awesome children, Woody and Nelly. They make my day, every day. I do joke with them that I’m happy to pay for the therapy they’ll inevitably need in later years due to my terrible parenting.

The failed attempt at a home perm on myself in the 80s. I wanted to look like Kelly McGillis in Top Gun.

As Naughty Grandma – you know, the one who is always causing mischief at Christmas.

I only ever wanted to be Barbra Streisand. I probably still do.

That’s All by Mel Tormé.

All the NHS workers, care home staff and teachers who are the real superheroes of 2020.