I think vestigially there's a synesthete in me but not like a real one who immediately knows what colour Wednesday is.

I like feeling my way into different minds and experiences. It comes naturally and always has.

I watch a lot of sport on television. I only watch certain sports, and I only watch them live - I don't think I've ever been able to watch a replay of a match or game of which the result was already decided. I feel bound to cheat and look up what can be looked up.

Once upon a time, when men and women hurtled through the air on metal wings, when they wore webbed feet and walked on the bottom of the sea, learning the speech of whales and the songs of the dolphins, when pearly-fleshed and jewelled apparitions of Texan herdsmen and houris shimmered in the dusk on Nicaraguan hillsides, when folk in Norway and Tasmania in dead of winter could dream of fresh strawberries, dates, guavas and passion fruits and find them spread next morning on their tables, there was a woman who was largely irrelevant, and therefore happy.

I acquired a hunger for fairy tales in the dark days of blackout and blitz in the second world war.

Mine the long night The secret place Where lovers meet In long embrace In purple dark In silvered kiss Forget the world And grasp your bliss

I'd like to write the way Matisse paints.