In 2016, I fell off stage in Switzerland and broke my back in four places.

I hit a bit of lumpy tarmac driving my motorbike over the Pyrenees in the early 1980s. There was no safety barrier and I found myself riding along the edge of a precipice on half the width of the tyres for 100 yards.

None of this was supposed to happen. At 38, I wasn’t supposed to lie on my back in the E.R. on a late December morning and be told by a teary radiation oncology resident that the pain I’d been having for two months — that I’d been assured was from having a weak core after months of chemo — was actually from a tumor that had devoured my L2 vertebra. John wasn’t supposed to have to hold me up on the toilet. Put my pants on for me. Do Christmas Eve for the children without me. I’m not supposed to be thinking about where he will sit and hold my hand as I take my last breath.

Swimming off the north Cornish coast eight years ago. I remember thinking, “Why did they teach you how to inflate your pyjamas in life-saving classes at school, when they could have just told you what to do in a riptide?”

To my first real boyfriend, for being so mean to him. But really I was just being mean to myself.

A vet, but then I discovered you needed qualifications.

In the school holidays, I worked at a soft drinks factory in Southport.

In my first bedsit when I went to art college in Leeds. It was a hideous basement, but I loved the freedom.

Still being here, aged 60. If I thought I was going to live this long, I would have taken better care of myself.

A black Mercedes 500 coupé in the mid-1980s. I thought it was one of the most beautiful things I’d seen. (I had been clubbing the night before.) And I can’t drive.