When Emily first suggested that she and I should write our own bucket lists following Trev’s  compelling example, I was very resistant – I didn’t want to do it at all. I couldn’t  see the point of pinning myself down to things that I might have no interest in after a year or two. But once I started, I found I really enjoyed it and things just flowed along like shopping items on the supermarket conveyor belt on their way to the till. And when I look at them again, I see that they won’t date, that they really are things that I want to do or see before I die. So, in the spirit of solidarity with Trev, here goes:

I’d like to:

1. Find a way to keep my glasses under control so that I don’t constantly mislay them. But I don’t want them on a string because I’m told that is aging.
2. Learn how to make a cake, maybe a carrot cake. My mother was a marvellous cake maker and my daughter Kate is as well, but somehow the baking gene skipped a generation. When my children were small I’d make their birthday cakes by buying Swiss rolls and putting them in the shape of their initials – T, K and L. They say that’s why there was never a Samantha or a Samuel.
3. Be able to put my head in the water when I’m swimming, rather than doing a sedate breast stroke with my head above water which my children find hilarious. In the same watery category, be able to get in the sea without screaming.
4. Visit the Golden Temple at Amritsar, a Sikh Gurdwara, and eat a meal there with the hundreds of others who are fed daily.
5. Go back to Granada, one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen, and learn how to dance flamenco in a red ruffled dress.
6. See all private and single sex schools abolished so that everyone could go to a mixed local school and there’d be an end to elitism and segregation according to sex and/or wealth.
7. Have a definite answer on the question of global warming and climate change so I know exactly what is going on in words that I can understand.
8. Lose the spare tyre round my waist, so that I go in and then out again rather than being cylindrical.
9. Travel round New Zealand in a luxury state-of-the-art camper van, stopping at camp sites and meeting all kinds of fascinating people.
10. Develop the stamina to write something considerably longer than the short stories I now produce and which people would enjoy and want to read.
11. Speak French again as fluently as I once did and speak Spanish using more than just the present tense.
12. See that my children and grandchildren are truly happy, or as happy as anyone can be in this imperfect world.