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I grew up in San Fransisco, in a tall Victorian terraced house. My granny lived at the top and my uncle and aunt were on the middle floor. My parents, younger sister Mary and I shared the ground floor with our cat Geoffrey. (He was really a prince in disguise. Mary and I would argue about which of us would marry him.) Here is a picture of Mary and me dressed up as a bucket and spade for a fancy dress competition, and one of Granny and me sitting on the wall outside our house. Granny used to slit open big brown envelopes so that Mary and I could draw and write stories on the back of them. I liked writing stories at school too; the first one I remember writing was about a rabbit with orange ears that looked like carrots. Mary and I never had any rabbits when we were growing up but we did have other cats (and lots of kittens!) and quite a few guinea pigs. After I’d finished school I went to Bristol University to study Drama and French. There I met Malcolm, a medical student who played the guitar. In our holidays we often used to go busking together. We would sing outside cafés and collect money in a big hat. I would write special songs for each country; the best one was in Italian about pasta.