Trees find their way into everything - my photographs, academic articles, literary theory, stories, and poems.

Art - I make collages, draw stick figures and take photos. When I paint, it's mostly vines - on walls, if possible.

Computers - Why spend twenty minutes doing what you can automate in just five hours? My laptop's screen is a portal into a magical, malleable and orderly world, with a choice of soundtracks. I build databases for fun, create websites, and fiddle around with graphics.

Books - I'm not a fetishist, with a thing for first editions and signed copies - I just want all the words in the right order, in a book that holds together, which I'm allowed to read in the bath. I am infatuated, though - admiring my books, rearranging them contentedly for hours, photographing them, stroking new additions, and turning feral at the suggestion I part with any of them. Ever. The first time I walked into the vast Norrington room in Blackwells, I began to hyperventilate and had to leave.

Music - I have a playlist for every mood of every book and go nowhere without my ipod. Film scores and classical music are the best for writing, but my tastes are eclectic and err on the dark side.

Miscellaneous - candles, fairy lights, incense, brilliantly coloured saris, spices, chilli, red wine, coffee shops, walking, Radio 4, driving, sunsets, maths, sandalwood, loud music, water, old buildings, wooden floors, long baths, thick fog, an immaculate house, cooking, Monty Python, Black Adder, quantum physics, playing guitar (badly), old religions, ancient societies, eating out, countryside, second-hand shops.