Even news of funding to save the arts can’t cheer me up. I’ve resorted to reading my old diaries

I’m struggling a bit this month. Then there are the usual pencilled diary dos for middle-aged women: the Monday morning cardio class that I’d just started attending, and the Friday lunchtime yoga session with Anna. Judith and I have continued recording remotely throughout lockdown; my agent’s vast office complex having been under wraps since March, and all those desks empty. It transports me to the boiling summer day I sat in the Groucho Club within elbow touching distance of my fellow judges on Helen Lederer’s Comedy Women in Print panel, discussing the finalists for the funniest unpublished novel category, while outside Soho thronged and card machines beeped in the ramen bars. I held a friend’s newborn baby; I started writing a non-fiction book; I popped in to see the Cindy Sherman exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery and the Olafur Eliasson at Tate Modern.