Last week, when I decided to rewrite the children’s book I’ve been working on.

I woke up this morning thinking maybe I don’t want to be an actor any more, then I had breakfast and I thought: actually, no, I really like being an actor.

I always thought I would be a terrible driver because I’m sort of a wafty person, but it turns out I am very good at staying in between the lines. I passed my test last year.

I can’t remember when I read, or was told, that he considered it a good thing to spend a short time every day thinking about death, thus getting used to its inevitability and coming to understand that something inevitable is natural and can’t be too bad, but it was in my early teens, and it struck me as a sensible idea. Of course I didn’t set out to think about death in a regular way every day, but I did think about it quite often, and sure enough, it worked. Why coming to see death’s naturalness should have caused belief in an afterlife to melt away, I am unsure, but it did.

Mum, because I never really knew how to cope with her alcoholism.

I’d have reported the tutor who asked me to read an essay to him sitting on the toilet as he lay soaping himself in the bath.

The Doctor in Doctor Who. I still do.

A dog, though my husband would prefer a cat.

Getting elected as MP for the Rhondda in 2001 despite everyone saying I was too “exotic” or “flamboyant”, ie gay.

Totalitarianism in Europe.