smarter than me. But here's the thing my life did get better. I made a decision to let go of my dreams, because they were killing me, and I stopped asking the impossible of myself. I changed my attitude and decided to focus on what I had rather than what i didn't have.

... 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.

I knew it, I just knew it! The person who had the job of writing my life's dialogue used to work on a very low budget soap opera.

The feel of them (books) and the smell of them. A bookshop was like an Aladdin's cave for me. Entire worlds and lives can be found just behind that glossy cover. All you had to do was look." Claire (Watermelon)

I couldn’t be with people and I didn’t want to be alone. Suddenly my perspective whooshed and I was far out in space, watching the world. I could see millions and millions of people, all slotted into their lives; then I could see me—I’d lost my place in the universe. It had closed up and there was nowhere for me to be. I was more lost than I had known it was possible for any human being to be.

For all of my life it was the size of my rear that caused me the most hand-wringing, but in this nearly-50 zone it is my stomach that is the problem. It seems to have broken free from its moorings and there is no knowing how far it will roam.

I loved being in my own head so much, it was getting harder and harder being with other people.