LAKE DISTRICT, ENGLAND

I was doing a cabaret in the West End and at the end of the run, theatre reviewer Diana Simmonds took me to the Lake District – home of Beatrix Potter and all that romance. We stayed in a 17th-century house with really dark beams and tiny little doorways; I’m sure it was haunted.

Diana made what seemed like an incredibly exotic meal of rabbit stew with prunes. I’ve never forgotten it! You know when you go away with someone and you ask, “What are we having?” and they say, “Rabbit stew with prunes”? Excellent!

The Lake District was incredible. Australians always come home and say they’ve missed the sky and the quality of the light but the light there was so soft and shimmery. You can see how it has inspired poets, writers and artists. It was late autumn – as John Keats wrote, the “Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness!”