People often ask me about my ‘process’ when approaching my writing and I am reminded of a quote from Alan Bennett in his introduction to his Talking Heads 2 monologues collection:

‘A playwright is not the best person to talk about his own work for the simple reason that he is often unaware of what he has written’.

Luckily my date with Hasina Rahman, founder of Pink Diamond Martial arts club, and the girls she has invited to my workshop is on Zoom. For as we start to talk and share stories, the revelation that they are capable of grappling with and wrestling unwanted intruders to the ground would have made me extremely nervous if meeting them physically.

My and my husband, Asif’s extended family is a picture of what renowned academic and historian Paul Gilroy calls the ‘conviviality’ of cultures — multiculturalism as an everyday ‘lived’ reality, not some abstract construct, whose success or failure can be argued over by politicians.

Touching the cover of a new book always holds the promise of being let into interior lives and other worlds contained within its pages, making you see your own life with fresh eyes.

Standing on my head is something I usually only do at my bi-weekly yoga classes at the gym I belong to, but in this COVID-19 lockdown world we’re all in, I am trying (and mostly failing as sons or husband interrupt with switching on ‘breaking news’ or box sets of ‘Suits’) to incorporate some practice at home.