Like many people, I have been able to measure out my life according to Adele songs. When she released her debut album, 19, I was a staff feature writer on a different Sunday newspaper.
I have a new hero. She is Dorothy Byrne, the former head of Channel 4 News who recently took up a post as president at Murray Edwards College, University of Cambridge.
There are some news stories that take a while to sink in. For days after the sentencing of a serving Metropolitan policeman for the horrific kidnapping and murder of Sarah Everard, I was speechless.
I once interviewed the author Bernardine Evaristo, who told me that, many years ago, long before she was a household name, she had manifested winning the Booker Prize.