I am a woefully bad driver. I once drove off with my crook-lock on (running over a bollard, uprooting it and stranding my Triumph Spitfire on top of the lump of concrete that came out with it in the process), I crashed into a motorway tollbooth in France, because I didn't notice the toll point approaching, and I managed a complete change of clothes whilst driving at 70 mph on a motorway in England (but it was along time ago and at least I didn't crash).
When We Were Friends
My dad used to go out with Christine Keeler (before, in case you were wondering). He said she was a lovely girl.
I love gardening, but the cosmetic type, where I go and buy a whole load of perennials, replant all my pots and then go round obsessively watering them each day and watching them grow, even counting the buds sometimes. The rest of the garden is totally low maintenance: indestructible hedging, climbing roses and evergreen shrubs, where I don't have to do anything much to them. I've also recently taken up feeding the birds.
I snapped two bones in my dog's paw by pushing him off a park bench. It used to be part of our daily walk ritual - we'd get to the park, I'd sit on a bench and look down at St Paul's Cathedral and the rest of London, he'd jump up at least twice and I'd give him a push and tell him to get down. This time he slipped and his paw got stuck between two slats as he fell. He's still not better. I feel even worse.
I used to think I was a really good cook, and then I taught my husband everything I knew and now he's way better than me. He cooks to relax, these days I do it largely out of necessity.
I'm scared of ferries. My dad built a yacht when we were kids and then insisted on sailing it in the Solent, the busiest waterway in the world, and we were so incompetent we were always being nearly run over by the Isle of Wight ferry. The up-close sight of a huge ship's skyscraper sides still fills me with dread.
I backpacked round Australia on my own when I was 21. I tried to make out I was far more independent than I felt.
I had two boyfriends at university: one from Bognor Regis, the other from Southend on Sea. I like penny arcades.
When I was six or seven I once woke up to find a man climbing through my bedroom window. As I yanked back the curtains to convince myself I was imagining it I accidentally hit him in the head and he fell onto my bedroom floor. It turned out to be my inebriated dad who'd forgotten his keys - egged on by my mum he thought it was better to scar me for life than wake my babysitting grandparents.
I was a terrible corporate employee - I always said what everyone else was thinking but was too smart to say, I was hopeless at Powerpoint, and I had a tendency to cry at key career moments.