If your life's at a juncture and you need to think about things, there's nowhere better than home. However old you are.

When I was your age, if a boy behaved badly, one simply scored his name out from one's dance card. (Sadie Lancaster - to Lara Lington)

I've never written a children's book, but when people meet me for the first time and I say I write books, they invariably reply, 'Children's books?' Maybe it's something about my face.

I'm allergic to family occasions. Sometimes I think we'd do better as dandelion seeds-no family, no history, just floating off into the world, each on our own piece of fluff.

Being a journalist is good if you want to write books: it teaches you to get beyond the blank screen. My books have been described as froth but there's scope to be witty and ironic about everything in life.

And we spend the rest of the evening getting very pissed and eating ice cream, as we always do when something good or bad happens to either one of us.

You can't just switch off your feelings because the other person did.