When the media, en masse, reported my imminent demise.

I’ve had motorcycle accidents – I had one where I ended up in intensive care. But if you are on a frontline – which I have been – and people start shooting at you – which they have done – you put yourself in quite considerable danger. So: on a moving frontline in northern Afghanistan in 2001.

One of these days I will encounter what Henry James called on his deathbed “the distinguished thing.” I will not be conscious of the moment of passing. In this life I have already been declared dead. It wasn’t so bad. After the first ruptured artery, the doctors thought I was finished. My wife, Chaz, said she sensed that I was still alive and was communicating to her that I wasn’t finished yet. She said our hearts were beating in unison, although my heartbeat couldn’t be discovered. She told the doctors I was alive, they did what doctors do, and here I am, alive.

The print size in my mind decreased with time’s incremental decline, and as I arrived at the last word – weeks – it suddenly struck me, with all the force of the fullest sense of the word ‘struck’, that this could actually be his answer and not just the logical next time period in my sentence. Every cell in my body, except those responsible for maintaining a reasonable, calm exterior, was now lindy-hopping at that possibility, the only one that hadn’t occurred to me until that moment.

Any writer who thinks I’ve ruined their work in performance.

Listening to the last 10 minutes of the podcast S-Town. It is one of my favourite reminders of what life is truly all about.

A cellist, inspired by my mum and dad’s friendship with Jacqueline du Pré, and seeing a documentary about her.

In my childhood, when I didn’t think about whether it was happy. It just was.

I would like the poem Cherish by Raymond Carver. It was read by my dad at my wedding, and is my absolute favourite.

Dawn French, because I am sitting next to her and she says if I don’t say her, she will hurt me.