Getting started is always the difficult bit. I’ve got several books in my mind and will write them one day. Finding the time to do so is the difficult bit. However, once I get the specific motivation for a particular book, the time to write it miraculously appears.

I’ve sketched out a book on prescription drug addiction but nothing has happened to stimulate me to write it. I’ve wanted to write a book on psychodrama for ages but I never got round to it until now. Suddenly Emmanuelle, one of our counselling staff, asked if she could have some training in psychodrama. I have no doubt that she has the natural skills to be able to do it. The first chapter of the book got written in two nights.

We are doing exceptionally well at present.

I am more interested in people’s opinions when I also feel that I know something about them personally. I do want to know what they stand for but also what sort of lives they actually make for themselves and whether they put their ideas into practice. Opinions on their own, without any personal or practical foundation, are indeed cheap.

I have been told that the next issue of a magazine will contain a robust attack on the views I expressed in the last issue.

It’s so easy to see things with hindsight. I am trying now to work out what I might think in a few years time when I look back at decisions I have to make today.

My brother Andrew and I were chatting about our parents. I was surprised to find how little I know about them. They (and my brother for the first four years) went back to India – where I was born – when I was ten, leaving me with a series of guardians. From then until I was eighteen, I saw my parents for just one year and I was at boarding school even then. After that I went off into the army for a couple of years and then to university and then I got married. I suppose, on reflection, there wasn’t much chance for me to get to know my parents. However, plenty of other children at that time, just after the Second World War, had a much worse time than I did. They had no parents at all.

The worms eat what we don’t eat. The birds eat the worms. The cats eat the birds. Who eats the cats? Well, I suppose eventually, it’s the worms – and they get us too in the end.

So David Cameron is off to Rwanda. What for? I suspect he is trying to prove that he cares as much for Africa as Gordon Brown. I would gladly vote for someone who doesn’t. Africa needs to sort itself out through becoming less corrupt, nepotistic and belligerent while becoming more industrious and productive.

David Hare is a skilful playwright. He needs no plaudits from me. Nor do I have the right to criticise. It’s just that I didn’t have any real sympathy for any of his characters.

In a psychodrama session at lunchtime she gave a superb imitation of one of the other patients. She really should do that professionally.

In the evening, I watched one of our other patients take a major part in a television drama.

All this talent around us every day keeps us firmly in our place.