Things tend to fall out of my head after a while. I've lost a lot of French and Italian, and last night I had a conversation about sharks where I drew a total blank on the smallest shark in the world which is jawdroppingly sad. I used to know lots of poems off by heart. When I was small and read everything and anything I could get my hands on, by torchlight under my duvet, on the stairs, I would get the odd 50p off my grandma by reciting poetry to her when I visited. I liked the sounds of the words, the mystical pull on people when you did it well, the deserved praise for something I was good at. Acting for me was never really about showing off, but about wrapping myself up so entirely in words that I forgot about me and everyone else. All that mattered was giving the words to someone else and making them REALISE and, reading that sentence over, I just want to shoot myself in the head.

This is the first poem I ever learned.

Tarantella by Hilaire Belloc

Do you remember an Inn,
Miranda?
Do you remember an Inn?
And the tedding and the bedding
Of the straw for a bedding,
And the fleas that tease in the High Pyrenees,
And the wine that tasted of tar?
And the cheers and the jeers of the young muleteers
(Under the vine of the dark veranda)?
Do you remember an Inn, Miranda,
Do you remember an Inn?
And the cheers and the jeers of the young muleteers
Who hadn't got a penny,
And who weren't paying any,
And the hammer at the doors and the din?
And the hip! hop! hap!
Of the clap
Of the hands to the swirl and the twirl
Of the girl gone chancing,
Glancing,
Dancing,
Backing and advancing,
Snapping of the clapper to the spin
Out and in--
And the ting, tong, tang of the guitar!
Do you remember an Inn,
Miranda?
Do you remember an Inn?

Never more;
Miranda,
Never more.
Only the high peaks hoar;
And Aragon a torrent at the door.
No sound
In the walls of the halls where falls
The tread
Of the feet of the dead to the ground,
No sound:
But the boom
Of the far waterfall like doom.