• (Taken from her autobiography -- see references)

7:30 Christopher comes into the bedroom wanting me to check his homework. As it's English homework, and Eddie, who usually helps, is on a long-distance call, I have to ring up my sister Jane (who runs the school) on the other line

8:00 The post arrives. Half the letters are from charities, and are over two pages long. I cannot possibly cope with them at breakfast time, so I have to put them aside to study later when I can find a moment of absolute peace and quiet.

10:00 Shopping. I can't check my change fast enough. Only when I've left the shop do I realize that I've paid 35 pounds too much.

11:00 To the Post Office to collect my Child Allowance. I have to kill in a form so that the book can be registered in my new married name. Can't do it on the spot because the form is long and complicated. I have to take it home so that Eddie can check it tonight.

12:00 I have promised to give a buffet lunch for a charity meeting at home, to raise money for Population Concern. I have forgotten to prepare the mayonnaise, so I have to ring my sister Ann to remind me how to do it. Normally Christopher holds the phone and relays the information to me in the kitchen, but he's at school. I rush from the phone to the kitchen, from the kitchen to the phone. It is not the best way to make mayonnaise.

3:00 Eddie rings to ask me to get yesterday's Financial Times and read him the Stock Report. It takes me at least three tries to get it right.

4:00 Christopher's friends come to tea after school. One of the boys brings some medicine he's supposed to take. Panic! Have we read the instructions on the label correctly? I ring his home to check. His mother asks me if I could drive her son home as she has to wait for the plumber to arrive.

6:00 I look up the boy's street in the A-Z. We get into the car and I start navigating. I'm soon hopelessly lost. I phone his mother from a call box.

7:00 We arrive at last. It was a journey of only three miles!

7:15 I leave for the theatre and work in a terrible rush as a result of the delays.

7:30 A huge pile of letters awaits me at the Stage Door. I have to look through them in case any one of them is urgent. The letters from the morning's post are still in my bag, unread. I ask my dresser, Robin, to "glance over them to see if there's anything urgent". He kindly agrees - and I've saved myself three quarters of an hour of agony.

12:00 I get home to kind that I've set the TV video recording machine all wrong and a documentary I particularly wanted to tape hasn't been recorded. Eddie comes in, with a letter. "Oh, this came," he says. I open it. It is from American Express. I had sent them a cheque which has been returned because the words and figures I wrote do not correspond! It's the third this week! The end of another day!

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