In her 41 years she helped forge the romantic ideals we now take for granted. Bridget Jones would not exist without her. Screen writers like Andrew Davis would have a much poorer living without her. Somehow, if the version of her life in the film Becoming Jane is any measure of her inner life, she managed to overcome her disappointments and any short comings in relationships. She maintained her mental stamina, while I scrabble to recover mine. She overcame her difficulties. In the words of Martin Amis on the death of the late author J G Ballard. She “gave shape to what had shaped” her. I wondered if I would ever be able to do same again.

At last I had to take my leave of her to catch the bus back to Winchester. But as I moved away from the table, quite happily, I was called back. Her voice was in the air. It was not mine. As with the laughter on the upper floor it came through time to me and said:

“It’s all right… you don’t have to go… Come here…” I paused, looking around to see if anyone else had heard her. They had not, and so asked her silently as I neared.

“What should I do? How can I move forward again?”

And she said deliberately: “Write about your loves and losses.” She smiled and was gone.

Again I was taken aback. Was I going mad? Am I in recounting this now? More importantly why, after months of dealing with life’s difficulties should I recall this moment for this piece now? Why am I so desperate to regain my voice and be published? Why not just shove it all in a small diary and be done with? But no, I cannot. 

There is a force which is driving me. There is a sprit which is making my fingers force these thoughts on to a computer. How far we have come since the days of JA’s tiny pieces of writing, on her rather insignificant-looking, octagonal table. How far I have come in my recovery that I should be able to put two sentences down after each other and actually recall the contents of the first, so wracked is my short term memory and concentration.

I declared earlier I was an enforced fan of Austen in my teens. I would daydream endlessly and stare out of the windows at the mountains of Snowdonia rather than listen to her then. But this year, over two decades later, in Chawton, I was re-acquainted with Miss Austen, and she can only hope I’ll follow her advice from beyond the grave.