Poetry was one of the things that interested me most as I was growing up. I used to write it in my head all the time. I still think the very greatest pleasure in life is to write a poem.

You become more tolerant when you become older. You're not interested in rapping people over the knuckles; you're interested in understanding them.

I enjoyed the whole process of learning and was always happy when autumn came and school or college started up again.

One of my most vivid memories of the mid-1950s is of crying into a washbasin full of soapy grey baby clothes - there were no washing machines - while my handsome and adored husband was off playing football in the park on Sunday morning with all the delightful young men who had been friends to both of us at Cambridge three years earlier.

The whole first year of my career was a public vote. I know exactly where I've come from and the public played a massive part and I'll never forget that, but I shouldn't have to explain to anyone I need a break.

I'm just saying the producers and people who work on music are getting left out - that's when it starts getting criminal. It's like you're working hard, and you're not receiving. In any other business, people would be standing before Congress. They have antitrust laws against this kind of behavior.

We are living in very challenging times. Pressured in the workplace and stressed out at home, people are trying to make sense of their lives.

Until 2005, I still thought of my surf lifesaving career as fulltime and kayaking as a pastime. I watched the 2004 Athens Olympics and saw people racing that I knew I could beat, and that was probably the turning point: I decided I should either do it properly or stop wasting time kayaking and concentrate fully on Ironman.