You Learn A Lot, Writing Fiction.

The Day Is Refracted, And The Next And The One After That, All Of Them Broken Up Into A Hundred Juggled Segments, Each Brilliant And Self-contained So That The Hours Are No Longer Linear But Assorted Like Bright Sweets In A Jar.

You Have This Comet Trail Of Your Own Lived Life, Sparks From Which Arrive In The Head All The Time, Whether You Want Them Or Not - Life Has Been Lived But It Is Still All Going On, In The Mind For Better And For Worse.

In Old Age, You Realise That While You're Divided From Your Youth By Decades, You Can Close Your Eyes And Summon It At Will. As A Writer It Puts One At A Distinct Advantage.

And In Another Year Everything Will Be Different Yet Again. It Is Always Like That, And Always Will Be; You Are Forever Standing On The Brink, In A Place Where You Cannot See Ahead; There Is Nothing Of Which To Be Certain Except What Lies Behind. This Should Be Terrifying, But Somehow It Is Not.

I Have Had To Empty Two Family Homes During The Last Few Years - First, The House That Had Been My Grandmothers Since 1923, And Then My Own Country Home, Which We Had Lived In For Over Twenty Years.