Sentimental music has this great way of taking you back somewhere at the same time that it takes you forward, so you feel nostagic and hopeful all at the same time.

I've seen men like you in Doris Day films, but I never thought they existed in real life...The men who can't commit, who can't say 'I love you' even when they want to, who start to cough and sputter and change the subject. But here you are. A living, breathing specimen. Incredible.

Not for the first time in my life, and certainly not for the last, a self-righteous gloom had edged out all semblance of logic.

Sequels are very rarely a good idea, and in any case, the success of the book changed my relationship with the club in some ways.

Yes, yes, I know all the jokes. What else could I have expected at Highbury? But I went to Chelsea and to Tottenham and to Rangers, and saw the same thing: that the natural state of a football fan is bitter disappointment, no matter what the score.

Surely we all occasionally buy books because of a daydream we're having - a little fantasy about the people we might turn into one day, when our lives are different, quieter, more introspective, and when all the urgent reading, whatever that might be, has been done. We never arrive at that point, needless to say.

For the best part of 40 years she had genuinely believed that not doing things would somehow prevent regret, when, of course, the exact opposite was true.