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.

The world we are bequeathing to our children and our children’s children, both climatically and politically.

Not much. Given that I’m up and active most mornings around 5am, I’ve had enough of everything by 9pm.

Sometimes the overwhelming realisation that I will one day die; but mostly that ShortList man from the tube throwing stones at my window.

That the last general election didn’t take place later. We might have got rid of the Tories with a couple more weeks.

An old camper van that has cost me more in repairs than my house, my wedding and all the holidays I’ve ever been on.

I cleaned for a very posh lady in Knightsbridge who made me handwash her knickers. I’d advertised myself in The Lady as a dog walker, so I’m not sure how I ended up there.

To all those whose fleeting interaction with me has fallen short of what they’d hoped; the unwitting recipients of my occasional grumpiness.

Childbirth. And the wheel of our camper van coming clean off on the M1.

Every time I got drunk and out of order. Especially in my teens and 20s.