When I think back on it, I have a sense of relaxation, as if in the seventies no one had to try to be anyone other than who they were. I'm sure that's not really true, but that's how I remember it, and I suppose it might be relatively true.

I also remember a line from a song by Smog [Bill Callahan], which seems to describe the experience of a town-dweller moving to the country: "I was raised in a pit of snakes/Blink your eyes - I was raised on cake."

Another part of the rejection I mention was the realisation that Buddhism quite simply ignores or dismisses a whole hemisphere of human experience that finds expression in and is enshrined by the mystery religions.

I'm more a dog person than a cat person.

I did not understand the differences between Catholic and Protestant until I was an adult.

I think the natural is, for many people, the gateway to something supernatural or otherworldly.

I would say that, apart from being a writer, I have also always been very conscious of the idea of a 'world elsewhere'.