July 2018, when I married my third husband, Roger, after two years of proclaiming that marriage at 76 was stupid.

I used to be “Mister Disinvestment.” Now I would like to be Mister Investment and say, “Come! Come and be part of an exciting, exhilarating process. Come in! Come in on the ground floor and see a people do something that’s probably never happened before, people seeking to become something radically different from what their antecedents would have made us believe they were likely to become.

I can’t remember when I read, or was told, that he considered it a good thing to spend a short time every day thinking about death, thus getting used to its inevitability and coming to understand that something inevitable is natural and can’t be too bad, but it was in my early teens, and it struck me as a sensible idea. Of course I didn’t set out to think about death in a regular way every day, but I did think about it quite often, and sure enough, it worked. Why coming to see death’s naturalness should have caused belief in an afterlife to melt away, I am unsure, but it did.

I am so obdurate I do not change my mind.

An earthquake in Peru forced me and a young man into the street, where he had to introduce me to his family at three in the morning.

Losing the 1992 general election.

I’d have reported the tutor who asked me to read an essay to him sitting on the toilet as he lay soaping himself in the bath.

Brave, naughty, diligent.

Getting elected as MP for the Rhondda in 2001 despite everyone saying I was too “exotic” or “flamboyant”, ie gay.

The melanoma has returned in your lung.