I could be kinder to myself.

For the words to fly from my fingers as just occasionally they do.

A really careful lobotomy, to switch off bits of my brain.

A halter for global mega companies, and the return of community. Throw in an ironing board that does the ironing and a floor that self-cleans.

I remember being a teenager and writing this romantic short story in the style of the Brontës on a computer and I didn’t realise that the person whose computer it was could just print it out. A group of boys had a couple of pages and they were all reading it.

I wouldn’t change anything. When I was 29, my first husband died, so I learned a new way of thinking about life, which is: there are many things that you can’t control.

I’m not really ashamed, but I haven’t read Lord of the Rings.

When my first husband died, because it felt like my life was over, and it was challenging to keep in life at the time.

My mum, for the way that she brought up her three children and managed to make her money work. She worked as a cleaner for all these families we went to church with. She would cycle there with my little sister on the back of her bike – we didn’t have a car. She had an amazing mind for planning and organising so that we got to do ballet, we went to Brownies.

I worked in a cafe, which I loved, but when it was quiet we had to scrape the fat out from between the tiles on the floor with a butter knife.