Julia Donaldson: ‘After having Covid, I got a taste for coffee with ground cardamom’
How do famous names spend their precious downtime? In our weekly My Saturday column, celebrities reveal their weekend virtues and vices. This week: Julia Donaldson
8am
The standard start to the day is tea in bed provided by the person who needs the sleep less, 19 times out of 20 my husband Malcolm, while I read. I’m supposed to be reading Howards End in my book group but I just lost it on the Underground.
9am
I’m going to sound very lazy, but I have a bath while Malcolm gets the breakfast ready. In case anyone says, ‘Oh, that’s wasteful,’ Malcolm will then get in my bath – not at the same time, I must add. A bath is relaxing and a shower is invigorating but I’ve already got quite a lot of vigour, so I don’t like showers. I can never manage to hold the showerhead and the soap and I just find it stressful.
10am
Breakfast is coffee and toast. I had this horrible post-Covid taste disorder where the only way I could stomach coffee was by putting ground cardamom in it, and I got a taste for it. I feed the cats, Tabitha and McTat, named after the cat in my book Tabby McTat, which the BBC have now adapted [for BBC One and BBC iPlayer this Christmas].
11am
We go to the farmers’ market and buy vegetables. I got into it during lockdown when I ordered an aubergine and it turned out to be an aubergine plant. I potted it and it actually produced eight aubergines.
12pm
We pack a Thermos of coffee and some bread and cheese and fruit, and take ourselves off fungus hunting. I met Malcolm when I was 20 and he was already interested in mushrooms, so I had to join him because otherwise I’d have been standing tapping my foot by every tree.
2pm
We have a book of Sussex walks that we follow. I don’t really like the hilly ones – I like a bit of woodland, a bit of downland, and a bit of hedgerow. Looking at nature can spark something off for a book, or we’ll discuss a half-formed idea. Conversations often go something like, ‘If there was a parrot who mimicked different sounds, what would the plot be?’
4pm
I practise the piano and have a singalong with Malcolm, who is learning the accompaniment to a song cycle by Schumann called Dichterliebe.
6pm
I love a cryptic crossword, and my other guilty pleasure is playing spider solitaire. Then we do some Duolingo. We’re learning Spanish and trying to keep up with German.
7pm
Our friends who run the local bookshop come over and often bring boxes of my books, which people have ordered. I sign some copies of The Oak Tree, my new one, and we have a glass of wine and share the mushroom risotto I’ve cooked from our foraging. Then we play Codenames or Scrabble with our guests.
9pm
Malcolm and I put on music and play cribbage or backgammon, then watch an episode of MasterChef or Call My Agent!, which we’re rewatching because we loved it so much.
11pm
I drop off to sleep quickly, but if I wake in the night, I do alphabets in my head. I think of a subject – for example, fish – and lie there going, ‘Angelfish, brill, cod…’ It sends me back to sleep, though it’s often very annoying when you get to X.
