What would you like to leave your children?

So it seems to be my responsibility, particularly to my children, also to my wife and friends, is not to be Pollyanna and pretend everything's okay no one would take me seriously if I said that but it's to be as present in their lives now as I can be so that in years to come, they don't feel either guilty or bad at my having been left out of their lives, that they feel still a very strong not a memory of particular actions but a memory of a complete family rather than a broken one. That seems to be something I can do or try to do.

What I expect to happen is that my body will fail, my mind will cease to function and that will be that. My genes will not live on, because I have had no children. I am comforted by Richard Dawkins’ theory of memes. Those are mental units: thoughts, ideas, gestures, notions, songs, beliefs, rhymes, ideals, teachings, sayings, phrases, clichés that move from mind to mind as genes move from body to body. After a lifetime of writing, teaching, broadcasting and telling too many jokes, I will leave behind more memes than many. They will all also eventually die, but so it goes.

So maybe I don’t try to figure it out. Maybe I just aim to get the couch right: strong bones, high-quality leather, something earthy and animal and real. A surface that knows something of what it was to be alive, that warms to our touch and cools in our absence. Also: an expansive bench that fits all of us. Something that will hold us through everything that lies ahead — the loving, collapsing and nuzzling. The dying, the grieving.

Exactly what my parents left me: the knowledge of the difference between good and bad and right and wrong. Everything else is entirely up to them.

Good self-esteem.

A sense of the world being full of possibility and it being in their hands to make it a better one.

A healthy planet.

An understanding that kindness is the answer.

I’d like them to inherit my optimism.

As little rubbish to sort through as possible.

A sense of optimism.

The best possible understanding of who they are and where they came from.

A sense of what really matters.

A strong work ethic and enough wealth not to need it.

A sense of wonder.

I don’t have children. I will leave my nieces money because girls need money of their own. Anything to make women independent.

A bushel of self-confidence.

A book of passwords for all the electrical stuff in the house.

More than I can, sadly. I led the softest of lives in the softest of times, and my daughter will face sterner challenges.

A sense of what’s right, a few quid and some nice paintings.