Lots of things were there [in the seventies], in the social experience, but not quite named, lurking like a stranger on the edge of the playground.

Speaking of [Philip] Larkin, in his poem about the First World War he wrote something like, "Never such innocence, before or since, that turned itself to past without a word".

Apart from the underlying mystery of all things, there is also another possible specific mystery in this situation: Why did I become so interested in Buddhism, Zen and so on? I seem to have a Buddhist voice in my head, and someone asked me about this recently, saying he was intrigued.

I was in just the right generation to have taken feminism seriously by osmosis - also the generation when the breakdown of the family really began and for whom The Smiths were something new and essential.

This strong sense of who I am that I've always had, since I was very young, is what makes me write.

To me the seventies represent normality, and, of course, it is a normality that is now anachronistic.

In the meditation, of course, the question is repeated and repeated until you run out of answers - or so I hear.