What are you going to do when you grow up? Dodging the question as to whether that would ever happen – or indeed if it ever has – I'd glibly answer journalist. How hard could it be to write and ask questions, which I was trained to do by a mother obsessed with social niceties. Should I be asked to dance, rare enough for a giant spotty speechless teenager, my partner must be seen laugh, or at least smile, before the music stopped. When it came to topics, I chose the two least available in my convent boarding school: cinema and travel. A long career in two halves, the first watching films at festivals round the clock and hanging out with stars on distant locations, the second moving randomly around the planet. Heaven all over earth for any colonel's daughter whose military zeal is tempered by Irish indolence. Who would have it any other way.