Volunteer. I’d raise money for Cancer Research UK. And I’d like to help some kind of mental health charity as well. The way we treat the elderly in this country is shocking - I mean the general contempt we have for them. So it would be great to run a coffee shop where lonely old people could go for a chat.
I‘d definitely get involved in animal charities. I loathe cruelty to animals. It’s one of those things that I just can’t bear. I’d also volunteer to walk dogs for people who live alone and have become ill.
Right now, I work hard doing something that is of no use to society, and which does nothing but enrich a small number of greedy assholes. To spend my time actually helping people instead would be wonderful.
Other than that, I’d set myself some reading targets. I’d read all of Dickens’ novels, in chronological order. Or maybe I’d read the complete works of Jane Austen. I can think of countless books I’ve always wanted to read but never got round to - The Canterbury Tales, Jude the Obscure, Madame Bovary, War and Peace, To the Lighthouse, Lucky Jim, Bleak House, Moll Flanders, Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, Brideshead Revisited, etc. I have never read a word of H G Wells, or Siegfried Sassoon, or Iris Murdoch, or D H Lawrence, or Joseph Conrad, or Walter Pater, or Henry Fielding, or John Ruskin, or Proust. I did a literature degree, but my ignorance is limitless.
I’d maybe do some evening classes as well. I’ve become very interested in science as I’ve got older, so maybe an A Level in biology or chemistry or something like that. I’d also love to study Russian and learn the guitar.
My advice would be to get into a routine. Wake up, eat a healthy breakfast, do some yoga and meditation, read for a couple of hours, have lunch, go for a walk, then spend the afternoon gardening or studying Japanese or practising the piano, and so on. Above all, do something good, something that helps other human beings and makes the world a slightly less horrible place. It will make you happy.