As I write this to you, I’ve now been knocking around for six decades and you’d think it was about time I actually got on and did anything. But I’m always thinking that, so instead I want to try something else today. I figure that after all this time, I am stuck with me and anything I don’t like is never going to change now. So I want to talk to you of the other stuff, I want to talk about the things about me that I like.

Chocolate.

Wait. I may have misunderstood the brief.

Okay, no, things about me that I like, got it.

Um.

Er.

Give me a minute.

Quick thinking. That’s it, I’m quick thinking.

That’s actually a joke of mine that I like very much but have yet to get into a script. It doesn’t work so much in straight text — I mean, you got it, but it wasn’t hysterical — yet in the right circumstances it would be a good line. Say someone asks you what you like about yourself, or they ask you to describe yourself, something like that. You then give them the wide-eyed, panicked, not-one-single-clue look and then if you can time it absolutely precisely, you come in with that quick-thinking line a pixel before they try moving to the next question.

Timing is crucial, but if you get it spot on, it’s a good gag. Plus it’s a bit meta: in order to slowly come to the answer that you’re quick thinking, you have to have thought of it right at the start so that you could time everything well. So you are quick thinking, it’s true.

You also over-analyse lines.

Which reminds me that I have one more line of mine which I really like and I remember it now both because I just said “over-analyse” to you, and because the other day I had to read a podcast advert for an online therapy firm.”Years and years ago now, my therapist told me that I overthink things,” I say. Er, to you, I say it to you, not in the advert. Anyway. I say that, then wait for exactly the right length beat pause before continuing: “To this day I wonder what she really meant.”

I think that works, I think it works in part because you know it’s true, you somehow know that there really was a she and that I do really wonder about this. But it’s also a fairly tight, short line, which is very important in writing because it means you don’t have to type much.

Actually, that is something I do like about me. I type well. I know I used to be 120 words per minute and I’ve slowed down a huge amount. But still, typing speed tests measure only copy typing, how fast you can enter a given series of words. They’re not about writing. So you might well beat me on how fast you press the keys, but for writing and typing combined, I think I could take you.

Oh! I have another one, I’d forgotten this. Someone once told me that they were lesbian.

“Oh, yes?” I said. “I think I’m Sagittarius.”

I think that’s funny, and of course you can easily disagree, but it was also a line that was accepting. Even welcoming.

There you go. Three written jokes in sixty years.

I’ll take that.

Funny. I’m thinking back over sixty years and usually I abhor that, but today it’s like the sixty years have been telling me to pay some attention. Just in the smallest, most unimportant ways. Like right now, this moment, I’m officially in the Commodore Lounge of the Queen Victoria cruise ship, docked in Tromso, Norway, and listening to a singer and pianist. But that singer has just finished a Diane Warren song and I’ve long deeply admired her writing. And I said I was officially in the Commodore Lounge, but I am certain that it’s only called that because of copyright reasons.

For the Commodore Lounge is on deck ten. It’s at the front of the ship. Every deck plan calls this the forward section. So I’m really sitting in Ten Forward and even the design of the windows is like those in this same bar on the starship Enterprise.

Mind you, the Enterprise has better WiFi. I’ve been without internet for the giant majority of the week and will be again in just a couple of hours. I can’t decide what I think about that, but I have now read ten novels and a non-fiction book this week so I grant you that maybe being without WiFi has its benefits.