A Life in the Day: Doris Lessing, Nobel-winning novelist

The writer, who is 89 this month, won the Nobel prize for literature last year — the oldest recipient of the award. She lives in northwest London with her cat, Yum-Yum. Her new book, On Cats, is out in paperback From the Times of London.

I’m up early to feed Yum- Yum. I got her when she was middle-aged and thought it funny to call her after a glamorous future empress. Yum-Yum was one of the “three little maids from school” in the Mikado, who ended up marrying the Mikado’s son, Nanki-Poo. My own breakfast is just plain yoghurt. I used to drink coffee but can’t have caffeine any more. I stick to water and my son Peter’s Diet Coke. Delia, my Peruvian treasure, shops for me and does some cleaning. But this house is never clean. There’s too much of it — seven flights of stairs. I rarely climb more than two of them now.

I have to lie down for an hour in the morning and afternoon. When my back gave way I learnt a marvellous new phrase: wear and tear. I asked the doctor why my back hurt. “Wear and tear, my dear,” he said. So that’s what I’ve got. In the Royal Free hospital recently, the consultant told me I have heart failure. Then he said: “But think nothing of it.” In my vocabulary, failure associated with heart means dead or dying. He assured me it was just an expression for when you have two things wrong with the heart. I never used to give my health a moment’s thought. Now

I feel consumed by it. This week I was told I have a wonderful complexion and shiny eyes. I put that down to indignation at how I feel! I have no energy any more. It’s intolerable, especially when I think of how I used to be.

After my morning lie-down I read the Telegraph and The Independent, then I might scribble a few letters. The fact is that ever since I won the Nobel, all I do is talk — whether I know anything about the subject or not. I once gave a talk at a university in New York. At the end, a girl asked: “Now, Mrs Lessing, tell me the meaning of life.” I replied: “What makes you think I know it?” She said: “Come on. Don’t be like that. Don’t hold out on us.”

I knew what would happen when I won the Nobel, because I have friends — Nadine Gordimer and J M Coetzee — who are Nobel prize-winners. They warned me I’d have to talk for a year and wouldn’t be able to do a stroke of work. So journalists and photographers troop in. But soon there’ll be another winner. What a relief — they’ll do all the talking instead of me. I’m bored stiff with myself. I miss writing, but am not sure it will ever come back. Maybe at 90 that’s what happens. But then I know one 80-year-old who might just as well turn up her toes, and a woman of 93 who’s as chipper as anything. I’m sure people decide to be old. I’ve always had lots of friends of all ages. Now I can’t get out of the house much, they come here.

Lunch is toast with something spread on it. I expect to be told next that I’ve got an ulcer or something serious. I can’t eat the things I used to love — citrus fruit, tomatoes, curries at night. After my toast I lie down again. When I’m not talking, I read. I’ve just finished two terrifying books by the geneticist Bryan Sykes — The Seven Daughters of Eve and Adam’s Curse: A Future without Men. If you like men, the second is more frightening. It’ll keep you up all night. I’ve also enjoyed Nick Rankin’s Churchill’s Wizards, about the extraordinary things we did in the war. Having lived through a world war, I know there’s nothing we can’t cope with. I was always being told by soldiers that war was mostly about being bored, with times of tremendous action. Between Monte Cassino and the Normandy landings, they were half-witless with boredom.

I give away mountains of books to Africa and Oxfam and anyone else who comes here. I get The New Yorker, which is always inviting readers to read more books. I buy armfuls from the local bookseller in West Hampstead. I phone up and somebody collects them for me.

It’s lovely to have money to give away — that’s the bonus of winning the Nobel. I support Oxfam, Shelter and Centrepoint. I’ve also got a fondness for a local cat-and-dog home and an organisation to help writers. I was much too proud to write begging letters when I was broke. Miraculously, two people I’d never met said they’d heard I was hard up and enclosed some money. They were communists and told me that when I had enough I should pass on the money to somebody else who needed it. I’ve been doing it ever since.

There’s nothing I want. We all have too much stuff. Luxury has never interested me, but I enjoyed staying at good hotels when I travelled. In Vienna, at the Hotel Sacher, I was in my room, marvelling at the rugs, eating sachertorte, thinking, “This is perfection,” when a piece of chandelier fell on the floor. I laughed — perfection is not so easily achieved.

In the evening I cook for myself and anybody else who happens to be here, but I’m too lazy to cook for parties any more. Once upon a time I thought nothing of cooking for 40. I gave a party at the weekend and ordered a raft of mezes for 15 people from Mango, our local Lebanese restaurant.

Bedtime is much too early for my taste. Lights out at 11 doesn’t suit me. It makes me bad-tempered. At least I have interesting dreams. Last night I dreamt about a Jesus-type figure in Palestine in the old days — which is not really my country at all. It was very convincing. This Jesus chap was worrying about what he was going to get for people to eat. Ordinary problems — just like a housewife’s.