My father invited us all to choose our rooms in the new family mansion. My nephew P suggested that I bag the room next door to my enormous bedroom so that I could use it as a lab. I was more interested in the den off this second room (and, in any case, it looked like someone else was already setting it up the room next door as a dormitory for eight people).

What attracted me most to the den was its decor. The walls were covered in Air Force blue paper decorated with gold markings, and the ceiling was bordered with a beautiful white cornice. It was a shame though that the ceiling itself was covered in artex from the 1980s.

My nephew P had done much of the work on this room, helped by my uncle. What they hadn’t touched was the decoration of the store room off the den. Its vaulted ceiling was covered in carpet samples still attached to the rectangles of cardboard that gave their descriptions. It would have been a criminal act to change something so cool.