I've never been nostalgic, personally or politically - if the past was so great, how come it's history?

Covering up, so far as I can see, is often the accompaniment to far more truly shameful behaviour than stripping off.

I wouldn't know how to fool a man any more. My deceiving days seem so long ago.

'Stress' was the catch-all every pamper-pedlar I spoke to used to explain why healthy women feel the need to be regularly patted, petted and preened into a state of babyish beatification.

In my third husband I had discovered a blissfully laid-back type who thought it nothing less than hilarious when I misread the map on the way to Wales, so it took us an extra three hours, or when I was sick in a plastic carrier bag during much of the drive back from Devon - a bag that turned out to have a hole in it.

I didn't cry when I left free-booting, smash-and-grab papers that would have appeared to be far more natural homes for me and, at the risk of being vulgar, paid far better for my services.

I know that Brighton is famously a mixture of the seedy and the elegant, but in the summer of 2001 seediness swamped elegance hands down.