Nineteen thirty-nine. Grand Rapids, Michigan. Station WOOD, 20 bucks a week.

I am pretty happy right now. I have just got back from a dog walk. I have loads of nice work coming out. I am feeling pretty chipper.

My granddaughter is only one, but she gives the best hugs. That’s when I’m happiest at the moment.

If it wasn’t for coronavirus, it would be right now. All my life I’ve felt a pressure to achieve. It’s gone now, and that gives me a sense of freedom. Whenever I, for short moments, forget about corona and climate change, I’m happy.

When I was seven I wanted to be a nun. When I was eight, I wanted to be a boy so that I could be anything I wanted. Also, of course, I wanted to be Samantha in Bewitched.

I was not great with my mother-in-law, who was a very gentle woman. I thought she would be an uninvited part of my life for ever, but she died early and I wished I had been more open and patient.

When Kellie Harrington won gold for Ireland in the boxing at the Paris Olympics I pumped out the briny.

When I was 17 I took on a class of six-year-olds for a week. When the Angelus rang at noon, they stood up in silence and I realised I was supposed to recite the prayer, which I did not know. I said: “There will be no Angelus today because of that child fidgeting at the back.”

Remember, if you sit at your desk for 15 or 20 years, every day, not ­counting weekends, it changes you. It just does. It may not improve your temper, but it fixes something else. It makes you more free.

Catherine Corless, who spent her own money to secure birth certificates for the unrecorded dead children of the Tuam mother and baby home.