For me, life is not about gold taps and marble all over the place.
Although I'm a city boy, I am a rural person at heart - and that comes from school. I'd lived near Marble Arch in London and it was fantastic to be surrounded by fields and trees.
London really is my city; I was born within a breath of Marble Arch.
If I'm a national treasure, does that mean I'm like the Elgin Marbles and will get repatriated at some point?
When the others grew tired and went home and there was no one else to play with I used to play my own Test matches on the porch of our house, using a broom handle or a stick as the bat and a marble as the ball. I would arrange the pot plants to represent fielders and try to find the gaps as I played my shots.
My brother shaved a cricket bat out of a coconut branch... we played cricket with anything we put our hands on - a hard orange, a lime, a marble - anything we could use in the backyard or the streets.
I can draw pencil lines to show something is moving, but if I'm writing, I struggle with how to write it. The boy ran down the hallway? The boy ran quickly down the hallway? The boy ran down the marble hallway? I agonize over the words. So my editor works very hard. I'm lucky to have her.
In my office, I have a very beautiful marble bust of Seneca. I always have my eye on him when I'm taking phone calls. He's one of the many philosophers I've always read and admired.
You find me at work; excuse the dust on my blouse. I sculpt my marble myself.
Children are more restricted than ever when it comes to taking physical risks - one of the ways previous generations built resilience. Thanks to health and safety mania, leapfrog, marbles and conkers are now considered unsafe.
