archiveThe truth about everything*

I have been going to the gym on and off – more on, I have to say – for the last 15 years or so. I remember summer 2004, at the age of 28, contracting chicken pox for the very first time and lying in a bath of bicarbonate of soda, peering down at the small, but insistent dome of my belly, thinking, “here we go, then, the middle aged spread I have heard so much about”. Incredible, really, how ready you are to consign yourself to the knackers’ yard...

What do spoons mean to you? Nothing, perhaps. Maybe beyond their primary functions of stirring tea, shovelling yoghurt into your mouth or, if you’re so inclined, cooking up your drugs on, they hold no value or emotion for you. I think – no, I know – that is the correct, default option. But for me they seem to be more than that. I was at my mother’s in Yorkshire recently and she was showing me her new cutlery. It was nice, modern, but it meant she needed to clear out...

In a recent Guardian Blind Date, the two hapless souls ate at the Sanderson Hotel in London, which reminded me of a mortifying, excruciating experience I'd had there years ago. I didn't have time to go into it then, as I was working on my next book, but now I do, so here is the sorry tale. The Sanderson Hotel is in Berners Street, London, and enjoyed a period of huge popularity upon opening in 2000, when it became the go-to haunt for the era’s expensive handbag and watch-sporting celebs...

I always maintain I’m not a nostalgic person. I don’t get glassy-eyed at the thought of my hands still being small enough to make a Mars bar look gargantuan, lament the days when a Freddo was 10p, or wish Martine McCutcheon was still in EastEnders. But I do think about the past quite often now. That’s the problem with ageing: there is so much of the past accruing behind you – casting a shadow like an out-of-control leylandii – that you can’t help but think about it. So many things...