Just a bit of inspiration from an old episode of Radio 1’s Screen Time podcast with Ali Plumb. As I’ve said to people on Instagram and Twitter quite a lot lately, don’t be ashamed of your opinions. If you happen to, for example, not like The Favourite, and everyone’s saying how amazing it is, but you’re like, I don’t like it. Don’t feel ashamed, don’t be like, oh I’ve got to watch it again so I can teach myself to like it.

I’m currently listening to the audiobook Invisible Women by Caroline Criado Perez. It’s focus is on the gender data gap - the ways in which the world is often unthinkingly designed for men and how that affects women in real and unexpected ways. I’m finding it hard going, not because of the book itself - it’s well written, researched and read - but because the unintended and far-reaching consequences of a simple lack of thinking weigh heavy on me.

I’m a bit late with these this year, but you know how it is. My diary has quotes on the bottom of each page and I like to share the best ones with you. “Going to church no more makes you a Christian than sleeping in your garage makes you a car.” Garrison Keillor “Love thy neighbour as yourself, but choose your neighbourhood.” Louise Beal “Politicians are the same everywhere.

Back in the days when Mr C and I first began spending quite a lot of time together, we went to London several times, and on one of these journeys, I was introduced to the phenomenon that is “Underground Bridges”. I have mentioned them briefly before but not in too much detail. Basically, entering London on the M4, you travel through what any normal person would call a tunnel. But Mr C absent-mindedly called it an underground bridge and then would not admit he was wrong and tried to convince me that it could be called an underground bridge.

Happiness is being too busy to be sad.

Every year I buy a diary that has two days to a page and I fill it with nonsense details about what I had for dinner and where I went during my lunch hour. Things that aren’t particularly interesting to anyone else, but are interesting for me to look back on later. I can never remember the little things like that, but whenever I do, it brings back the more important memories that I do remember.

Insomniacs are relentless about time, about night-time, because each minute is another grain of sand through the hour-glass and into your head for the next day. Time For Bed, David Baddiel I’m no insomniac, but I can understand that. I could not sleep at all last night. I grabbed an hour between 11 and 12, and then I watched the clock tick by until about half 2. The rest of the house settled into sleep, then I watched the clock tick by some more.