So if inspiration is so important - how do we find it? And more importantly - how do we give it to others? Well finding it is easy. It may not be sold on the shelves of Waitrose but it is readily available to those who know where to look.

I'd like to think that, if I'm lucky enough to exceed the age of 80, with all my marbles and my more important faculties all present and correct, I'll be cut some slack in the matter of my more treasured bad habits. I'll feel that, having survived so long indulging my relatively few vices, I might as well head for the exit in a like manner.

Five-centimetre soup? I wonder, as I lie on my back on the radiotherapy machine, arms in clamps above my head and breasts fully exposed to the team of three female professionals and one young male medical student.

Dear Santa, I never imagined I would spend most of the year fighting breast cancer. Please bring me a full head of hair in 2013 and a cancer-free future for me and all those I love!

Unfortunately, I get myself all worked up before the session and feel sick by association - just the sight and smell of the hospital make me retch and I have to whip my wig off lest I puke all over it. (Advantages of Wigs #103: You don't need anyone to hold your hair back when you're sick.)

An hour or so after the usual blood test, the oncologist comes into my room and draws the curtain around me for privacy. Uh oh, bad news.

Ok, let me first make it clear that I am in no way urging you to try these steps at home. Hair loss is one of the things we most commonly associate with cancer and chemotherapy, so I decided to make light of my experience and share with you the unfortunate steps of my road to bald-dom.

While my friends are busy getting engaged, married or pregnant, I'll be spending the first year of my 30s battling breast cancer. Six months of chemotherapy and radiotherapy and a possible double mastectomy mean my life is effectively on hold.

Reactions to my breast cancer diagnosis were varied. An older, male, former colleague simply sent a one-line email that said, "Better get the box sets in then." (He has been similarly helpful and supportive ever since.)

When I was a child, I assumed that by the time I was in my forties I would have achieved certain things. I imagined I would be living a life of sophis...

Whatever your age, if you have music in your bones, nothing will be as joyful as standing in a muddy field at sunset when the bass kicks in.

So karaoke has been around in the UK for quite a while now. Like most people, I've done my share of tipsily emoting to You're So Vain or Smells Like Teen Spirit while my friends watched politely and waited for their turn.