Ignore the food bores 

I like the Art Deco apartment block where I live; the building is beautiful and the neighbours are nice. Just one thing; they keep having their old kitchens torn out and new ones installed – two of the three nearest flats to me have done this in the space of six months. 

I don’t complain about the noise as I’ve been a very noisy neighbour in my time, but this architectural fetish has made me realise how out of step I am with the national psyche. For I would no sooner have a new kitchen installed than have a minaret erected atop of my building.

My flat has its original tiny galley kitchen; like many of the swanky 1930s apartment buildings in Brighton & Hove, it once had a restaurant in the basement – Marine Gate along the seafront even had its own off-licence. Those were the days when rich people didn’t cook and I’ve tried to respect tradition, for once, by making sure that my fridge – in theory – contains only a bottle of champagne and eye serum, like the Manhattan career girls I read about in Cosmo as a tot, though admittedly a few cheeses and punnets of fruit sometimes sneak in.