What do you do? We all ask that of strangers when we meet socially – don’t we? Or, if the person is young we add the word “want” –  What do you want to do? My problem has never been in putting these questions to others but always in answering them sensibly.

Why only yesterday Chris and I were at Rosie’s dinner party for nineteen people (and very charming it was in the big barn which has a retro-chic, rather Bohemian-style, interior); some of the guests we had never met before, and amongst those was an artist whose reputation and work I was familiar with – the barn used to be his studio (now he works and lives primarily in Barcelona). He’s an attractive man – imagine a cross between Richard Burton, Tom Jones and Dylan Thomas (maybe he has some Welsh blood in him) – and you can tell he’s an artist by his hair, thick and slightly dishevelled, and the flair with which he carries off wearing a green scarf and woolly jumper. Somebody must have told Mike the artist what I do and, towards the end of the dinner party, he collared me.

“What do you paint?” he asked.

Now you might think that is a simple enough question, but considering that most people within a three-mile radius (the epicentre of my fame) know me or, at least, know of me, I was taken aback a little.

“I used to be a portraitist, mainly, but now I paint anything,” I said rather lamely and boringly.

Modesty prevented me from elaborating and awkwardness made me wish that Mike would talk about himself, or something else. We talked about Dawlish: our views on my hometown (and his for a time) were two sides of the same coin – my side was the shiny one.

Later on, whilst pondering over the peculiar conversation and my inability to talk with ease about one of the things I love to do nearly every day of my life, I recalled another conversation I had several years ago with the then retired head of the art department at my old college. We met quite by chance at an art exhibition.

“Hello Sally!” an aging gentleman beamed at me.

“Hello John!,” I began after the pause of recognition, “How amazing that you can remember me after all this time, especially as I dropped out in my first year!”

“How could I forget you? Do you remember your interview? We wanted to laugh…” he chuckled.

“No, it was so long ago. What on earth did I say?” I dreaded to think what he was about to tell me.

“Well, the other tutors and I were sat behind my table and you were sat on a chair in front of us. You were wearing a wearing a red, white and blue striped miniskirt.” (I remembered that nice miniskirt and nodded.) “And, when the others had finished asking their questions, I asked you, ‘What to you want to do in life?’ and you said….” John tried to hold back his laughter.

“What did I say? Become a famous painter?”

“You said, ‘I want to marry a millionaire’!”

How embarrassing! At my art college interview! Remembered forever, not as a great artist or writer, but as a comedy act! But it did sound like me. Please, let’s not talk art or what I do or want to do – what do you do?