Imogen Stubbs

Judging by any childcare manual, mine was a pretty rotten mother. She smoked, she drank, she lost her temper; she was ecstatic about taking holidays on her own, and stupefyingly bored by many aspects of motherhood; she dumped us by the roadside if we ever argued in the car; she forced us to take Scottish dancing classes. But I wouldn’t have changed her for anyone in the world.

"I have been influenced by her in many ways – a strange penchant for home-made yoghurt and sleeping in VW camper vans, a love of Northumbrian moors and the melancholy side of joy – a loathing of neon lights and unquestioning conformity."

But perhaps most dominantly I am inspired and challenged by a single phrase she once wrote in a cookery book she had compiled for me: “Thank heavens for giving me a daughter who is brave enough to make a fool of herself.” I think it is actually a misquote from Robert Louis Stevenson: “For God’s sake give me the young man who has brains enough to make a fool of himself.” But perhaps that was deliberate. Either way, she passionately believed that people should constantly seek to elaborate and reinvent themselves. In her forties (among many things), she learnt to play the drums, studied tap-dancing, and took a degree in Chinese.

I have consequently felt compelled to follow – taking up swing dancing, riding, writing and so forth. Not everything works and I have freqeuntly failed and felt foolish. But whenever I consider resigning myself to the mixed blessing of knowing my own limits, I am haunted by her passion for life as a series of beginnings, and her vehement belief that habit and ritual are great deadeners, and a cowardly response to the terrifying, magical challenge of being alive.