Do you ever feel sad as you look up at the sky because there may be people – well, intelligent beings – on planets so far away that the distance between you and them is uncoverable? You can never walk towards them, sit on their rocks and look around at their world. They are out of reach. I sometimes wave. You never know. Brian Cox reckons that, complex life being so hard to achieve, there may be one intelligent civilisation per galaxy. Any neighbours we might have aren’t going to be popping round to borrow a cup of sugar any time soon.

Recently, I went to Stoke Poges.

I heaved a fabric carrier bag filled with an old, large stone set with a weathered and blackened plaque down a gravelled avenue, transferring the bag from arm to arm, sometimes trying to clutch it to me with both hands. I had to stop often because the bag was bloody heavy.

Stoke Poges is a pretty little village near Gerrards Cross. But deep in my DNA, it had only ever meant the Memorial Gardens, where my father’s ashes are.

In my play JUBILATE! The central character ANNA is certain about everything.  She is married to a vicar, she has four children, her life is perfect.  She has a captive audience in her husband’s congregation and starts to point out their mistakes to them, taking some of the most vulnerable under her wing and sorting them out.  She’s funny because, as with all comic characters, the gulf between her view of herself and the audience’s view of her is wide.  She helps bring about the end of one marriage, the suicide of a young woman and the abuse of a single mother by her son.  Adorable.  And even though her own life is disintegrating around her as the curtain falls, she is still totally unaware, absolutely sure that all is well.  Her self-belief is both ridiculous and dangerous.