I set myself one task, which was to get Labour on to the front foot, back in the game, making the weather on the economy, and that's going to take me a year.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
When I first started, I just wanted to work. I wouldn't necessarily do anything, but I'd pretty much almost do anything at the very beginning.
I take on daunting tasks.
I discovered that the best thing for me was to be very busy all the time. I can get a lot done, and I can do those tasks well.
My job is to get things done.
I have the opportunity to do that right now, to try to work as hard as I can to really leave my footprint in this game that has given me so much.
I went into this job to do plays, but that's here for 10 weeks, and the rest of the year I do a lot of other things-the administrative work of planning, reading plays.
Thankfully I'm not endlessly ambitious, but I have done some crazy ambitious things like buying an island off the west coast of Scotland in the late Sixties.
All I had done for five years was work 18 hours a day all over the world. I needed to step back and distance myself from it.
I'm lucky to have a job doing something I really love to do, and I'm happy to accept the pressures of relentless deadlines or reader expectations as necessary evils. It's probably not as stressful as mining coal or leading men into battle.
Every day, my daddy told me the same thing. 'Once a task is just begun, never leave it till it's done. Be the labour great or small, do it well or not at all.'