I Like Poking My Nose Into Other

The Only Thing That I Was Equipped For With My Very Mediocre College Arts Degree Was To Get A Job In Teaching.

To Slide Into The Domed Reading Room At Ten Each Morning, Specially In Summer, Off The Hot Street Outside, Was A Sensation As Delicious As Dropping Into The Water Off The Concrete Edge Of The Fitzroy Baths.

We Were In A Great, Seething Moment In The 1970s. There Was A New Labour Government And Everything Seemed Full Of Hope... But, As We Got Older And We Saw How Much Women's Behaviour Contributed To What Was Wrong, We Stopped Being Able To See Ourselves Purely As.

It's Disturbing At My Age To Look At A Young Woman's Destructive Behaviour And Hear The Echoes Of It, Of One's Own Destructiveness In Youth.

I Think Some People Wished I'd Kept Myself Out Of The Book. But I Kind Of Insist On It Because I Want The Reader To Share My Engagement With The Material, If You Like, Not Pretend That I'm Doing It Completely Intellectually.