But it's been a fair few, and far too many since we last shared a meal.

I, too, remember going into work for the first time in a skirt, one of my own black ones as I hadn't yet received the uniform items. I had set a date, and that deadline helped force my hand. I wrote an analogy in one book, where a child really, really wants to go into the sea to swim, but can't brave the initial chill, so her Dad grabs her and dives in head first, leaving them both laughing.

That was my deadline, and my thoughts were much like yours. When I headed off for work that day, my downstairs neighbours daughter, about 8, was playing with a girlfriend in their garden. The friend asked, "Are you a boy or a girl?", and my little neighbour humphed and replied "She's a girl, silly!"

On my first music festival as myself, I was approached by my old mandolin tutor, who asked if he could say something personal. I nodded.

"Just, I've never seen you looking happier"

Little jewels of memory.

I am now 68, with awful osteo rather than rheumatoid arthritis, in my knees, probably stemming from too many decades of descending mountains and long distance road running. I am skirting the edge of Type 2 diabetes, according to my specialists, partly driven by my medication, which is a balancing act between my congenital kidney disease and failing heart.

I'm still here, still me. I've crossed the world and toured solo in Western Australia as myself. My only regret is that I wasted so many years of what could have been real life, but, then again, would I have been the same person?