Before I was DPP, I did a lot of work trying to get rid of the death penalty in various countries, and one was Malawi. We’d been in court in Zomba and had to get a plane in Lilongwe, about 200 miles away. We got a local taxi: the guy changed his wheels for the journey because the car wasn’t roadworthy and then hurtled at speed, mostly on the wrong side of the road. I’ve never been so terrified.

So, when many years later I really was near death as a result of a haemorrhage after a miscarriage, and heard a doctor saying “She’s very near collapse – call the lab and tell him to run” and understood that the “him” was the person fetching the blood they were going to pump into me, I was not in the least alarmed as I dimly wondered if I had the strength left to think some suitable Last Thought, concluded that I hadn’t, and said to myself the words: “Oh well, if I die I die.” I was sure, then, that nothingness was just that.

When I rode on the back of a motorbike from London to Rome with my eyes closed the entire way.

My failed driving test a few months ago. I got three majors and by the end of it the examiner couldn’t wait to get out of the car.

It would definitely involve lots of sex. I would spend the afternoon having some crazy passionate declarative sex with my husband.

Getting older and dying.

A Henry Darger painting. Sadly, I lost it in the divorce, but it was a great parting gift.

The realisation that I am no longer young.

To the Scissor Sisters. Back in the day, I could be an absolute monster; I was a real asshole.