I'm Ensuring My Place In Heaven.

I Am Writing More Than I Have Ever Done. My Life Has Come Back To Me In The Most Extraordinary Way.

I Deeply Adored My Mum. She Was An Extraordinary Person, Even For The Prejudice I'm Likely To Have. She Was Beautiful, Amusing, A Tremendous Elaborator Of Things Into Comic Proportions And Extravagant In Her Imagination.

I Like Eating Out. I Like Buying Beautiful Paintings And Being Surrounded By Beautiful Things. I Have To Finance That Life. I Can Barely Afford A Pension Scheme Because I Don't Make Enough Money.

I Read ' Treasure Island' For The First Time At University. And I Started To Notice Then How Unresolved Some Things Were. Later, I Realised That Stevenson Was Interested In Sequels, And I Wondered Whether He Would Have Gone Back To It Had He Lived Longer.

In A Fragile Environment, We Need To Be Aware Of Ourselves As Members Of A Uniquely Powerful Species Living Among Other Species Who Are Quite As Interesting As We Are But Vulnerable To Us Because We Are Cleverer In More Destructive Ways.