When I'm traveling, I like extremes. It's nice for me to go to Canada in the mountains where it's snowing or to Cambodia where it's stifling.
There are a lot of recent pics of me rocking silk strings of beads. They're made by survivors of the sex trade in Cambodia who were rescued by one of the organizations I support.
Against my will, in the course of my travels, the belief that everything worth knowing was known at Cambridge gradually wore off. In this respect my travels were very useful to me.
When I moved from Cambridge, I donated all my fiction. I carefully cut out pages the authors had autographed for me. I didn't want those autographed books showing up on eBay.
My parents came from Calcutta. They arrived in Cambridge, much like the parents in my novel. And I found myself sort of caught between the world of my parents and the world they had left behind and still clung to, and also the world that surrounded me at school and everywhere else, as soon as I set foot out the door.
A friend got me a job on the door of the Camden Palace nightclub, which quickly progressed to running the place.
Everything that went on in my life... it was super important for me to have Camden first. And by that I mean my son and to have that relationship with my son to give me that quiet confidence that I needed as a mother and as a woman. Now with Brooklyn, I am just so at ease; I am so comfortable.
Clothes are my drug. I love Camden market - I have so many vintage pieces from there it's unbelievable. Clothes are really important to me, they give me that feeling of happiness. I love being a bit free with it all and not giving myself rules.
In Camden, it's just the atmosphere that gets me. It's simple. It's nice. It's real. And it's the people, too. I like to interact with them because they are normal and I am normal. People probably don't expect an Arsenal player to come to Camden Lock and, basically, be a normal guy.
I might be in an airport, late or angry with a ticket person, and I'm going to sort of check myself, because part of me is seen as Eric Camden. We all need as much help as we can get. It's a role model to me as much as to anybody else.
I was working in Camden Lock market from the age of 13 to 16, and people often suggested that I should be a model. I knew a girl working on a stall who was with Take Two model agency, so I decided to go along, and they took me on.
I would fight for my liberty so long as my strength lasted, and if the time came for me to go, the Lord would let them take me.
That really important freedom in my life, the freedom to marry, came about because of choices that were made by policymakers who had power over me and millions of others.
Let me say this: Camel is delicious, but when handled improperly, it's rank.
After thirty years of being 'the camel lady,' believe me: One becomes inured to the spotlight.
My biggest fear in life is living Nativity scenes. I hide in cars and drive around looking at them. Something about it is really scary to me. What parent would put their child in there with mules and camels and straw?
My mom once lost track of me at the zoo and when she found me I was lecturing a man about the difference between dromedary and Bactrian camels. I was about 3 1/2.
I have been agreeably disappointed in my idea of the camels. They are far from unpleasant to ride; in fact, it is much less fatiguing than riding on horseback, and even with the little practice I have yet had, I find it shakes me less.
The old Rankin-Bass animated specials seemed to exist in a loosely shared reality, which is what attracted me to them. Santa, Snow Miser, Rudolph, Frosty, even the Easter Bunny seemed to be on nodding acquaintance with each other, even if only in cameo appearances in each other's cartoons.
My role in 'Slumdog Millionaire' was a cameo, but it did expose me to cinema and took me to Cannes. I then did 'Prague,' which was a very niche film.
