Since becoming disabled, I can't stop asking one question

I’ve always been keen on perfume. My only other paid job, ever, apart from writing, was as a scent salesgirl at a pharmacy in King’s Cross station when I was a teenage runaway. These days I love the beautiful, singular perfumes of Ormonde Jayne, especially Damask, a stroppy gourmand rose.

“You smell gorgeous!” is one of the best things, after being called a good writer, that anyone can say to me. In the 1990s I lived in a big house which I filled with Diptyque candles; one of my favourite cabbies, standing on the doorstep, would always inhale deeply and say, “Julie, you’ve got the best-smelling gaff ever!”

But then, a fortnight after I acquired a pair of kittens (from Stoke Newington, who socialistically preferred the claustrophobia of the cat-litter box to my lovely garden, complete wit