But the important thing about learning to wait, I feel sure, is to know what you are waiting for.

But the delights of solitude don't only consist of dreaming. Next in enjoyment, I think, comes planning.

So it is necessary that we should learn to be alone.

I have always found it difficult to wait for things - whether it was to see my father or sailor brother, Alan, again after their long sea trips, or the chance of a better job, or even new curtains.

Naturally enough when I was a young dancer, I was terribly anxious to get ahead, and to get ahead quickly. I was impatient with all those older people who talked of the long grind to the top, who turned me down for jobs I knew I could do.

No matter how much we love our family and friends, a part of us needs the occasional moment of solitude as a plant needs water. It is the inmost core of each of us that, that part which nobody can define but which we all recognize because it never changes.

Everyone needs some time to themselves.