Newly returned from the best ever New Year in Scotland, I walk down Portobello Road and waft through nostalgia. All those felted hats in primary colours and Mongolian knits with floral patterns. The smell of frying falafel, dodgy hash and second-rate coffee. It takes me back to Hull fair, seven decades earlier, with my gloves dangling from elastic on the sleeves of my nap coat and a scarlet face full of vinegary, newspapered chips. I realise it is the first time in a while that I have moved slowly in a crowd without carrying a banner saying ‘Bring them home’ and shouting: ‘Shame on Hamas.’

I read that Rachel Riley has objected to HMV’s advertising of the film One Life, about Sir Nicholas Winton, which described the Kindertransport hero as a ‘British humanitarian who helped save hundreds of central European children from the Nazis’ (my emphasis). It was, it seems, beyond HMV’s remit to use the word ‘Jewish’. Shame on them! This is how you subvert the truth. You make Jews lesser, invisible. Thank you, Rachel, for being brave as well as brainy and beautiful. Back home, I light a memorial candle for my late father. What would he make of the cyclical resurgence of the world’s oldest hatred?

On the fabulous Elizabeth line at Paddington I am offered a seat by a nice young man. I gawp at him, amazed and appalled. Surely he can’t think I’m old enough to need priority seating? He does. This leads to a chat with the couple beside me, up from Southolt. They are Corrie watchers and I give them a spoiler alert which makes them, and me, very happy. In five minutes I am at Tottenham Court Road. In another ten I’ve nipped through Chinatown and am outside the Noël Coward Theatre, which was the Albery Theatre when I last played there, and the New Theatre when I first played there in 1970. I meet my chum of 50 years, writer Colin Shindler, and we catch up over fish pie at Sheekey’s, which is just as tasty as it ever was, if somewhat costlier. Which is, I suppose, everything to do with the price of fish.

We watch the National Theatre production of The Motive and the Cue by Jack Thorne. I cry twice and laugh a lot. Mark Gatiss’s take on Sir John Gielgud is so good it is practically a resurrection. The transient nature of fame creates a bubble in my throat as I wonder how many in that audience actually remember Gielgud. The actors playing Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor capture the essence of both of these larger-than-life figures, and Sam Mendes’s direction is perfection. The only ointment-fly is a rude security woman whom I watch behaving with the officiousness of the lately uniformed. Later she tries to prevent me from going backstage to genuflect to the cast by demanding my credentials and treating me like a terrorist. I hear myself say, ‘I know how to go into a stage door – I’m a bloody Dame!’ and then the sound of my New Year’s resolution to walk humbly with my God hitting the pavement with a thud.

Back home through the ghost of Storm Henk, I watch The Graduate from start to finish. Was there ever a better directed movie or, in Anne Bancroft, a sexier, darker, more restrained actress? Yes, you heard me: actress, you numbskulls at Bafta. Not a ‘performer’, as you now label us. Thanks, but I’m not a gymnast or a juggler – I’m an actress, and proud of it. Perhaps the organisation itself should be renamed Dafta?

A car arrives at seven the next day to drive me to Knockholt, Kent, for a shoot on a short film. I am night-eyed and mushy-tailed. The driver has a different registration number to the one on my phone alert, but I get in. The driver knows little English but lots of clever back routes, which I like. A call comes from home: ‘Your driver has just turned up.’ Gulp. I have clearly been kidnapped and this is my reward for all that marching. I start filming the route so that I will be able to sprinkle a paper trail for my rescuers. At the end of the hour’s drive I have aged considerably but the double booking has been cleared up. I am such a drama queen. Note, Bafta: a queen, not a royal non-binary.