I turned to new age spirituality to appease my need for something sacred

I WAS a religious child, convinced the devil was watching my every move, eager to entice me into the greatest sin I could conceive of at that time — stealing penny sweets. (I never did, by the way. A jelly snake didn’t seem worth spending an eternity hanging out with Satan.)

I even harboured a short-lived ambition that I might become a nun and I still think that, in another life, I would have thrived in an enclosed order. The routine of it, the satisfaction gained from steady work, the all-encompassing silence in which to centre myself.