Largely this is a class thing - writers tend to be cosseted little middle-class kiddies who think that the world owes them a royalty cheque. But just doing it - being in your room for years on end, locked in your head, alone with invented ghosts - it weakens and softens the body. And I know I can't just live in my head.

A tattoo doesn't make you look like an individual.

I feel like the only person in the world who sees David Beckham modelling his swimming pants on the cover of Elle magazine and thinks - oh, how much better a handsome guy like you would look, David, without all those dumb ink stains stitched into your skin.

And so we stayed out in the garden of the old house until we couldn't kick a ball, laughing in the gathering twilight, making the most of the good weather and all the days that were left, our little game watched only by next door's cat, and every star in the heavens.

My parents gave up a lot to bring me up in the little house on the prairie, and I wasn't prepared to make those sacrifices, nor was the generation before me and the generation after.

Sometimes we are only aware of how happy we are when the moment has passed. But now and again, if we are very lucky, we are aware of happiness when it is actually happening.

It can't always be a honeymoon