So many times I’ve wondered what might have happened to me if I had lost my legs, or even just my right one, where my first melanoma appeared two or three years later. If I’d just been a second slower stepping away from the car, I might not be dying now. I’d be legless, of course, but still in good health. Of these fateful forks in the road are our lives made up. We are all just a millimetre away from death, all of the time, if only we knew it.

What I studied at college – A-level economics.

I wouldn’t take back the drugs, but there are a few boyfriends that I’d edit out of my life.

I should have known that I might not like what my brain scan showed, just as I should have known that the symptoms of prostatism that were increasingly bothering me were just as likely to be caused by cancer as by the benign prostatic enlargement that happens in most men as they age. But I continued to think that illness happened to patients and not to doctors, even though I was now retired. Twenty months after I had my brain scanned, I was diagnosed with advanced prostate cancer. I had had typical symptoms for years, steadily getting worse, but it took me a long time before I could bring myself to ask for help. I thought I was being stoical when in reality I was being a coward. I simply couldn’t believe the diagnosis at first, so deeply ingrained was my denial.

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

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

Worrying that I’ve upset people.

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

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.