You know what it's like. Sometimes, you meet a wonderful person, but it's only for a brief instant. Maybe on vacation or on a train or maybe even in a bus line. And they touch your life for a moment, but in a special way. And instead of mourning because they can't be with you for longer, or because you don't get the chance to know them better, isn't it better to be glad that you met them at all?

Waiting to be 'better' is the wrong approach. It's learning to live with it.

You will go on and meet someone else and I'll just be a chapter in your tale, but for me, you were, you are and you always will be, the whole story.

Baking makes me focus. On weighing the sugar. On sieving the flour. I find it calming and rewarding because, in fairness, it is sort of magic - you start off with all this disparate stuff, such as butter and eggs, and what you end up with is so totally different. And also delicious.

I suppose I wanted to have my cake and eat it. But then again, what were you going to do with your cake if not eat it? Frame it? Use it as a sachet in your underwear drawer?

Every day I wake up afraid that I won't be able to write, that today is the day it has left me.

... I am more of an ambler. I once overheard my old boss in Dublin describe me as very "hello trees, hello flowers." It was intended as an insult and it fulfilled its brief; I was insulted. I had little interest in greeting trees and flowers but nor did I treat life as a treadmill, on which it was vital to keep fleeing forward in order to avoid being sucked off the back and out of the game.