When I was seventeen I worked as a counsellor at a co-ed sleep-away camp for eight weeks. I loved it but it could be harrowing - it was far too much responsibility for someone my age.

'Dallas' hit a chord back in the late Seventies and Eighties because it was the age of greed: here you have this unapologetic character who is mean and nasty and ruthless and does it all with an evil grin. I think people related to JR back then because we all have someone we know exactly like him. Everyone in the world knows a JR.

I can feel the 60S looming. In my profession I've just moved along with my age. By thinking in decades rather than whether someone's 42 or 47 you can give yourself a whole 10 years to turn yourself around in.

Middle age is when you've met so many people that every new person you meet reminds you of someone else.

Age becomes reality when you hear someone refer to that attractive young woman standing next to the woman in the green dress and you find that you're the one in the green dress.

I saw no African people in the printed and illustrated Sunday school lessons. I began to suspect at this early age that someone had distorted the image of my people. My long search for the true history of African people the world over began.

In old age we are like a batch of letters that someone has sent. We are no longer in the past we have arrived.