Something else I have a thing for is kitchen equipment – gadgets, crockery, cutlery, cookery books – all of these things rock my boat big time. So, when David mentioned Lakeland Plastics yesterday and Bill said ‘oh, it’s in Windermere, have you been there? It’s huge and fab’ – I got a bit excited.

For anyone who’s never heard of Lakeland Plastics, they are a cookware/kitchen gadget supplier, whose business built from mail order I think and they now have several shops dotted around the UK. They are sort of a kitchen-girl’s idea of a sweetie factory.

Their store in Guildford was always one of my favourite mooching spots but of course, where a Lakeland shop will flourish in the heart of the genteel South East’s posher parts, they are unlikely to penetrate Cornwall anytime in the near future I’d say.

Of course it goes without saying that we ‘NEEDED’ to pop into this Aladdin’s cave of the cook’s delights. So, Bill, David and I headed in, baskets in hand. My basket was overflowing a very short while later and these lovely stopper bottles ended up as part of my haul.

I have been looking for some ‘nice’ bottles for a while – to finally get around to filtering my sloe gin and sloe vodka in time for Christmas, as well as to make up some chilli oil for DMs pizzas!

At a couple of quid a go, they’re not as cheap as putting the gin, vodka and oil into old bottles, but they will last as long as the rubber seals stay OK and that’s a long time if the rubber on Keeler jars is anything to go by. In any event, my gin/vodka etc will look a whole lot nicer in these.

I wonder where my ‘Labels Unlimited’ software is – I have a need to make some labels. No, it’s not easy to make nice labels without it – Word doesn’t let you import photos or clip art onto labels (at least as far as I can see) and if you try to do them in a graphics package, it’s not easy to get the label the right shape – the software knows the sizes and sheet layouts of the labels and works beautifully. I just hope I still have it because DM built me a new PC recently so all of the software I had loaded before has disappeared.

Last year I was nest building - as I am this year too - I hope soon to have my nest built!