Describe your perfect hour
Sitting in bed with sun streaming through the window, a steaming flat white coffee and a good book. My husband is downstairs making us omelettes. My daughter is reading beside me, my son is playing classical music, and my toddler is lying next to us sucking his thumb.
What period of your life do you daydream about the most?
Being under the age of eight, when you are only a semi-sentient being and, if you’re lucky enough to grow up in a safe and comfortable home, everything is structured and predictable. There’s a feeling of time being elastic and totally your own.
What is your favourite time of day?
Every weekday at 9am, when the house is quiet and I’m optimistic about the work I will do. I’ll treat myself to 15 minutes of a book, then surface at lunchtime and realise I’ve lost half the day.
If you could spend five minutes with someone famous, who would it be and what would you ask them?
The writer Ursula Parrott. She wrote what was essentially the first divorce text, Ex-Wife, in 1929. Divorcees were pariahs back then, so I’d ask her about the resilience she needed to write, and about the people in her life who encouraged her to liberate herself.
When was the last time you cried?
Watching Love Story. I had no idea that Carolyn Bessette Kennedy was, in many ways, America’s Princess Diana. Seeing this woman’s spirit ebbing out of her because of the surveillance and the scrutiny she faced was very moving.
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What do you never have enough time for?
I have a theory that most people make time for what’s important to them. So I always have time to read every day but never enough to exercise. I’ll book a Pilates class, then get a tiny thrill from not going. I need to find new ways of getting a dopamine hit.
When was the last time you stole something?
By proxy, constantly, because my children are always finding treasures, such as hair elastic they’ve extracted from fossilised dog poo, or a teddy they have liberated from someone else’s house. I haven’t had to take anything back to a shop yet, but it’s only a matter of time.
When was the last time you checked social media?
Instagram makes me feel like I’m on acid at a circus. I last looked at it about a week ago, but sensory hypersensitivity means I can’t keep it on my phone. I’m not on TikTok, because I feel too old for it.
When was the last time you danced?
You can’t really chat when you’re dancing, and I’m a chatter. At a wedding, I’m the person hunched over, having a deep and meaningful conversation with anyone and everyone.
If you make it to your 100th birthday, what would be the reason?
As a freelancer in the arts, for my pension’s sake I’d rather not make it to 100 because I’d have to retire at 99. Maybe it’s that I finally found time for Pilates and became a nonagenarian Jane Fonda.