And now I’m a carpenter in Bristol. I’m not sure how I journeyed down these two decades to arrive here in a huge house with more money than I have time to spend. How did this happen? Sometimes I feel my life is like a vast sieve: pour in time and effort, shake, and a cloud of money drifts out. You entertain thoughts such as this if you live with a synaesthete. Nothing is like anything else and yet everything is like something else. A handful of raspberries is the sound of rain falling; the smell of diesel is the sour taste of fried okra.

One evening, many years ago, I sat in the garden of the Highbury Vaults pub, kneading the calluses on my hands, thanking some deity or other for the evening sun, and I began to talk to the man sitting next to me. This was Ian, a metal-worker, a man of steel, a colossus, so muscle-bound I wanted to repot him, to put him in a bigger body, a more accommodating body. I have since always been fearful that he will burst out of his own. He asked me what I was doing at the time, and I told him I was building a deck. He flinched (I half expected his skin to peel open) and said that he was doing the same. We had a few more pints and sketched some ideas on paper. At the end of the evening, when we stood and shook hands, I realised Ian was only an inch or so shorter than me. Absurdly this pleased me, made me trust him. Three weeks later Elemental was born. What else would we call our company? He wrought iron and I shaved wood. Elements. Fashioned elements. And now we build decks for people who can afford them — and they are many — in Bristol and Bath.

It was when we moved into the studio flat in Battersea, just after we were married, that Sonja decided it was time I learned to cook. She’d spent her childhood eating fish in its various guises and was fascinated by the abundance of food in London’s shops. Every Saturday morning we’d go walk-about, Sonja armed with a shopping list, and she’d point out fresh ginger, lychees, clemenvillas and asparagus., sharon fruit and Jerusalem artichokes. She tried to show me how to select the best but this wasn’t always successful. My huge hand would wrap round an avocado and in the act of squeezing it gently I’d reduce it to green pulp. We’d buy pork belly and calves’ liver, venison and guinea fowl — anything but fish. Then over to Fulham and she’d trawl the Italian delis for balsamic vinegar, pancetta and Parmigiano.

Early Saturday evenings, when a bottle of wine had been opened, we’d begin the lesson in the tiny galley kitchen. Sonja skipped the basics like poaching eggs or roasting a chicken. Instead she cut straight to lemon poussins persillades, guinea fowl with grapes, fresh tagliatelle with egg and truffle. She tried to show me how to fillet, skin and slice but I only ever ended up slicing myself. The kitchen was so small that I’d stand pressed up behind her, watching over her shoulder as we became increasingly distracted by contact and eventually the lesson was abandoned.