My favourite Friday treat is to drive out of the centre of Cambridge, where we live, and go for a swim at the health club I've just joined out in the countryside at Quy. It's a lovely pool, inside a converted barn. Usually it's just me and a couple of other swimmers there.
I just always really wanted to swim. It was always a family thing: dad obviously swam, and my sister did, too. And mum used to come along to meets. They had to drag me out of the pool - so there was never any pressure on me to swim. It was just something I loved doing.
My favorite way to unwind is to go for a walk with my husband and the dog at the end of the working day, then we go to our local health club for a swim and to sit by the pool and read for a while.
It [Cambridge] wasn't a holy grail in the sense that I'd never been to Cambridge. But then, when I did go, the contrast between Leeds, which was very black and sooty in those days, and Cambridge, which seemed like something out of a fairystory, in the grip of a hard frost, was just wonderful.
I'll just start laying out the melody exactly where I want it to fall. And then I'll go back and fill it out. Whereas, in other pieces I'm really just going a couple bars at a time.
I swim all the time at night - I've always been a water girl. It's a black-bottom pool and my pool light was out, and as I've done a thousand times I just kind of did a little seal dive. I saw a huge bright light and I literally thought, That's it.
I swim all the time at night - I've always been a water girl. It's a black-bottom pool and my pool light was out, and as I've done a thousand times I just kind of did a little seal dive. I saw a huge bright light and I literally thought, 'That's it.'
There is stuff going on inside me. But I have always been told to go out there and pitch like you can't tell if you just struck somebody out or just gave up a home run. If something bad happens, I don't dwell on it. Just give me the ball and let me pitch.
I think going on the road for a couple games, I always feel it's better to go out for a couple games than just one game and come back. The out-and-backs, to me, are not my favorites.
I also go on long walks with my dog, a golden retriever named Breeze-and I work out with weights at a health club a couple of times a week.
You are always racing against the other swimmers, but I always try to just focus on what I'm doing and how I want to swim my races.
I remember one time my cousin telling me - she's got four kids - she would pour the milk down the drain so she could drive to the Dairy Barn just to get out of the house.
Because I live in the countryside, I want a building which encourages me to have a fully formed relationship with the environment. It gives me an opportunity to not just be inside or outside, but in a range of contexts.
When I was younger I would go to the airport with my friends and drive out 2 A.M., 3 A.M. in the morning and just hang out until sunrise watching planes fly in and fly out. Just sit there and dream about how, one day, that's going to be us in those flights. We're gonna be one of those people with places to go.
It's the pool where we all go down to drink, to swim, to catch a little fish from the edge of the shore; it's also the pool where some hardy souls go out in their flimsy wooden boats after the big ones. It is the pool of life, the cup of imagination, and she has an idea that different people see different versions of it, but with two things ever in common: it's always about a mile deep in the Fairy Forest, and it's always sad. Because imagination isn't the only thing this place is about.
The people that have looked out for me and helped to steer me in the right direction, I just can't thank them enough. So, the drive, a lot of times it just comes down to looking around at the people who love and believe in you and realizing that you owe it to them. Even if I have a bad attitude on a certain occasion, I owe it to all these people around me to just come out and drive, push, and try to make this thing the best that I can
If I were to just focus on stand-up, I could actually, paradoxically enough, be home way more, because I would leave on a Friday, go do a couple theaters Friday, Saturday, maybe Sunday, come home.