At a function for the True Colors Fund, where formerly homeless gay and transgender kids were telling their stories. It was heartbreaking.

Watching the news. Human life seemed pretty cheap in 2024.

Last week I saw a moorhen feeding her chicks, and became overwhelmed by the miracle of parenthood and maternal sacrifice. And I hadn’t even been drinking.

The Strictly Come Dancing final almost destroyed me. I was howling all the way through – John and Johannes and then Rose and Giovanni. Oh my God.

I was almost run over by a bus when I was 13. And in 1991, in the Gulf war, an Iraqi missile hit close to my house.

On a personal level, the friend who is a single mum raising two kids by herself during this Covid era. She is a real hero. If a historical personality, I choose Mikhail Gorbachev, who probably saved the world from world war three.

I would like to come out at 16 or 17, and not 21.

When I was 16, at the beginning of the summer vacation, I worked in a factory that made industrial valves and I was a much worse industrial valve producer than historian.

Now. I’ve learned to adjust my expectations to reality better than when I was 20 or 10.

That I still don’t understand life. When I was young, I thought at some point I would find somebody who does. I am 45, and there is a good chance that I’ll never meet somebody like that.