Losing my eyesight – I live for the view, and the sunset and the sunrise.

I was looking at ageing in action, in black-and-white MRI pixels, death and dissolution foretold, and already partly achieved. My 70-year-old brain was shrunken and withered, a worn and sad version of what it once must have been. There were also ominous white spots in the white matter, signs of ischaemic damage, small-vessel disease, known in the trade as white matter hyperintensities – there are various names for them. They looked like some evil pox. Not to put too fine a point on it, my brain is starting to rot. I am starting to rot. It is the writing on the wall, a deadline.

A receding hairline.

Pain and loneliness.

My father because I was 12 when he passed and I blamed him for everything in my parents’ marriage. Now I realise he did the best he could and was just figuring life out like everybody else.

Driven, authentic, resilient.

When my trousers split on stage in Burn the Floor in Australia. I had always been warned to wear my flesh underwear and I did not that day.

I’ll never amount to anything. Who? He was my rival at dance school. It hurt and is something that I’ve always had in the back of my head to defy.

Lack of empathy and compassion.

When my UK citizenship was approved. It’s taken me eight years and lots and lots of money. I was at home in South Africa when I received the news and my mum said, “I am so happy for you because this is your glitterball.”