Why do you write?

You might have to ask the ten-year-old that I was, drawing cartoon strips or writing short stories, then binding them and putting them up on my shelf so I could easily observe my collected works. Still, very little since (apart from having my own children) has given me such profound satisfaction. Considering writing’s level of difficulty, if I wasn’t compelled to write I wouldn’t.

Are you a vivid dreamer?

Not particularly. They come in fits and starts. My middle-aged dreams are somehow linked to the assorted day-to-day anxieties that come with the territory. When I was young, I had a recurring dream in which a man dressed in black and wearing a fedora stepped out of the cupboard at the end of the bed and stood over me. Years later a psychic told me it was my grandfather, signwriter and poet George Baker, who died when I was eight months old.