Swimming off the north Cornish coast eight years ago. I remember thinking, “Why did they teach you how to inflate your pyjamas in life-saving classes at school, when they could have just told you what to do in a riptide?”

I inadvertently rubbed the milky residue of a toxic cactus plant into my eye while filming Women In Love in the desert in Namibia, and my body went into anaphylactic shock as the producer sped me to a clinic 50 miles away.

I had some gynaecological issues that were very sudden, about 18 months ago, and felt that I might be dying. I wasn’t but it was quite serious.

A panic attack on stage during The Importance Of Being Earnest. Well, it felt like death.

The only way out is through.

I don’t know. Probably Alice, maybe. But we were contemporaries, Alice Munro. I think it was probably most in poetry. I was of that age to get influenced. After a while, you don’t get influenced because your brain has turned to cement.

By members of a human race who have managed to avoid annihilating their entire species and can thus still do some reading, and remembering.

I would so much like to have a daily writing schedule. If I had one, I'd probably start about 9.30, write for 2 hours, have lunch, write another 2, then goof off. As it is, I goof off, then panic and write in the evenings. Do not follow my example.

Getting too involved in too many things. It eats your brain.

Long, lingering dementia, followed by death from choking on a fishbone.