I love my kitchen. I waited nine years for it.

In 1999, my previous excuse for a kitchen consisted of two rooms joined by a narrow archway, littered with appliances and with bits of worktop balanced on chrome legs or on the washing machine. Access to the freezer was a mere 45 degree opening and required a body posture on tip toes as well as extra elbows to hold up the lid as well as locate and retrieve food from the dark icy fathoms below. My faithful 1960’s cooker, given by a friend when she ripped out the kitchen of the house she’d just bought, did it’s best to issue edible morsels when I fed it with raw foods that I’d chopped and prepared on boards balanced on the sink, but it wasn’t fun or a family kitchen. Too narrow, too disorganised, too cluttered, too antisocial.

So, I waited. Until 2008  and then, the arch was knocked through, gas meter moved outside, cooker (still Old Faithful) and sink relocated and cupboards and worktops replaced. We scrubbed walls and ceilings and painted them, leveled floors and tiled them and Mike, my partner, built the oak counter and shelf for tea and coffee, from off cuts of oak, exquisitely put together. With room on either side of the stove, my daughter, Jasmine and I can cook together and work can be done at the kitchen table.

The kitchen is now the hub of the home, as I’ve always wanted, where we can sit, eat and talk together as a family.

I love my kitchen.