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You haven’t really made it in life until you’ve addressed the Oxford Union. That’s how I feel upon reading the flattering invitation to debate the proposition, ‘This House Believes Modern Youth Activism is Primarily Performative’, which tells me that I am ‘a sharp and independent voice’ with ‘a historically informed perspective’ who challenges ‘orthodoxies across the ideological spectrum’. Unfortunately, the 200-year-old body cannot cover the airfare from Washington to London, let alone an honorarium. But with an appeal like that, how can I say no? As an undergraduate, I was a member of the Yale Political Union, which, like the Oxbridge institutions on which it was modelled, is a boot camp for future politicians.

Shortly before the New Gardens Organiser at the National Garden Scheme (NGS) is due to arrive at our farmhouse in north Norfolk, my youngest child – in the throes of a screaming meltdown – eyeballs me as she rips the heads off a row of giant ‘Mount Everest’ alliums. By the time Fiona Black arrives, I’m spiralling into an existential crisis myself. Why did I bother asking if we’d be suitable, I wonder, contemplating the futility of gardening alongside children and dogs. Sliding tackles have taken out most of the alliums that survived the dogs’ digging. I retrieve a football from a bed of irises and chuck a bottle of Roundup weedkiller out of sight (soon-to-be illegal in the UK, but so effective, it’s the chemical compound I just can’t kick).

‘We are taking the picture to Cannes,’ said John Gore, the producer and financier of My Duchess, my new film about the Duchess of Windsor. ‘How exciting!’ I said. Then, a minute later, I thought, ‘Oh God! What am I going to wear on the red carpet?’ The following day I told my artist friend David Downton about my dilemma while lunching at Claridge’s. ‘Let’s call Stéphane Rolland,’ he said. ‘Wonderful idea!’ I said. ‘He’s great! He made the red dress I wore for the Heart Truth Red Dress gala in New York a few years ago, and it was spectacular.’ David called Stéphane as we had coffee, and the talented couturier sketched a terrific drawing of a beautiful white dress with ruffles while they chatted, and texted it to David. ‘Amazing!’ I exclaimed.

Chelsea and her partner had been trying for a baby for two years. Following several miscarriages, she became pregnant again last spring. ‘We were overjoyed,’ the 26-year-old says. ‘We thought this time everything would finally be different.’ Joy rapidly turned to worry when Chelsea began to suffer headaches and visual disturbances and made several trips to Worthing Hospital, part of University Hospitals Sussex NHS Foundation Trust. Eventually, foetal distress was picked up during a scan; after a transfer to another hospital and an emergency Caesarean, Bonnie was born in September at just over 26 weeks’ gestation. She had suffered a brain bleed and had chronic lung disease. ‘I knew something wasn’t right,’ Chelsea says.

It has been calving time in Devon and I arrive from London ready to work hard. The day starts at 6.30 a.m., when we check the field to see if any cows have calved. We check the ‘springer’ herd every two hours until 10 p.m. and intervene if a cow is in difficulty. Newborn calves are fed colostrum and taken down to the shed with their mothers. The farm I am working on keeps its cows outside all year round – not for this herd that little patch of blue some call the sky. But what the cattle gain in freedom, the farm labourers lose in comfort. The last time I was here for calving, in the spring of 2018, the weather was biblical: it was still snowing in April. Thankfully, the weather has held, but I’m not sure the same can be said of my body.

There’s a question I’ve started being asked at work. Given I’m a psychiatrist, it isn’t one I’d ever expected to hear: ‘Do I have cancer?’ A young woman with anxiety wants to know whether the lump on her neck is sinister; she has been watching a great deal of TikTok. A man in his late thirties, in for a routine review, mentions in passing that his sister has been referred for a colonoscopy and wonders whether he should be too. At a dinner party a few weeks ago, a friend leant across halfway through her low-alcohol natural wine and asked me, in a small voice, whether it was true her generation was getting cancer in their thirties. Yes, I said, perhaps a little too bluntly. She looked rather panicked for the rest of her evening.