So many times I’ve wondered what might have happened to me if I had lost my legs, or even just my right one, where my first melanoma appeared two or three years later. If I’d just been a second slower stepping away from the car, I might not be dying now. I’d be legless, of course, but still in good health. Of these fateful forks in the road are our lives made up. We are all just a millimetre away from death, all of the time, if only we knew it.

I would have thought more about exercise and a healthy lifestyle in my 20s, 30s and 40s.

I wouldn’t lose my virginity at an army camp and then roll over on to an ants’ nest.

There was a very large part of my 20s where I was an alcoholic, and an addict. When I lost my dad to cirrhosis, I knew that the only difference between us was that, tragically, he couldn’t stop whereas I could.

As being useful.

In my 60s. So many things that tortured me when I was younger have fallen away. Writing The Apology, the letter I wrote in my father’s voice, apologising for abusing me, has freed me from the last vestiges of anger, confusion, rancour and hate. It released me from a frame that had determined my life.

Nine years ago I discovered I had stage 3/4 uterine cancer and went through nine months of excruciating surgery, illness and chemotherapy. In that time, I touched death and it was the most powerful transformation of my life. I was forced to learn to take care of my body.

That most men have not yet come to understand the impact and the devastating consequences of violence against women.

Going off all technology.