For the next three years, therefore, I wrote plays and scripts, gave talks and presented features – all of which led me to an even greater sense of professional fulfilment, but also, unfortunately, to the brink of financial ruin. I loved the medium of radio, and I had commissions already waiting to be done. So I decided to stay at home and concentrate on my radio career. But when my sister died, I knew I couldn’t do the sports writing any more, principally because there’s no lonelier place to weep than the press box at White Hart Lane. Since 1996, I had been a well-paid part-time sportswriter during that four-year period, I’d had time to write radio plays and also a novel and a non-fiction book I felt professionally very fulfilled I also had a nice boyfriend and was rather happy. Because the first thing I did, when she died, was to give up my contract with The Times. Not because I particularly wanted to bare my soul in public, but because her death changed my life and created the conditions for the book to be written. When Eats, Shoots & Leaves came out, and people wanted to know the story behind it, I found that I couldn’t tell that story without talking about the death of my sister in September 2000.
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