But the idea that I should be a teacher and a researcher of some sort did not vary over the years.

As a teacher myself I've been in situations where parents come at you, and sometimes parents come across like the teacher doesn't want the best for their kid and it can be really, really hurtful.

When my opera Plump Jack was performed in 1989, my first piano teacher sent me something that I'd composed when I was four. I remember I played it, and it still sounded like me. I'm the same composer I was then.

I don't have a lot of skills, but one thing I can do is, I can compartmentalize. I can make that a little world that I can go back to, so I can be a waitress, or I can be a teacher, and then go and work on my book.

I count myself well educated, for the admirable woman at the head of the school which I attended from the age of four and a half till I was thirteen and a half, was a born teacher in advance of her own times.