Passions: Kitchen confidential - you can forget about cooking in my shiny new room

Living without a kitchen has turned me on to Pot Noodles and I’m hooked

Mum's the Word. Pic: I Amos

I wouldn’t call it a passion. More of an obsession. My kitchen. The room I don’t want anyone to go in to. Ever. And don’t even think about cooking in it.

After the old one literally fell apart - the oven didn’t work, the washing machine leaked so the floorboards rotted and the cupboard doors decomposed - it’s taken three years to renovate due to Covid and Brexit and supply issues but it’s almost finished. It’s pristine and I mean to keep it that way, to the point of not wanting anyone to use it.

Now I understand why Carrie Bradshaw could keep her shoes in the oven because it was never used for cooking. Absolutely - sloppy casseroles and spitty fry-ups will be going nowhere near my gleaming new hob and oven, although shoes can keep on walking too. We’ve lived without baking for three years and I think we should stick with Pot Noodles. I’ve grown to love them and I’m never going back to four-pan family meals and dirty dishes.

It reminds me of an interview I did with Ruby Wax who told me her family were crazy because they always kept their furniture covered in the plastic it was delivered in. Sounds fair enough to me now.

I also understand my great-grandmother, a South Yorkshire miner’s wife, mother of ten and cleaner, who kept everyone out of the front room. Among her multiple cleaning jobs was the village church and the vicar allowed her to play the organ occasionally so she taught herself and eventually managed to acquire an instrument of her own. Her pride and joy, it sat in the front room, opposite the fireplace with the newest, brightest rag rug at the hearth, and no-one else went in. All the more remarkable when you consider that this was a miners’ row ‘through house’ (through the front door and straight out the back) with two rooms downstairs, one a living kitchen with range, and two bedrooms upstairs, for 12 people. I never understood the unwillingness to use a room when they were clearly pressed for space, but now I do. Entirely reasonable.

So once I’ve painted the ceiling all that remains to be done is remove the plastic film from the cupboards to reveal my favourite room in all its gleaming glory. Although on second thoughts I might just leave the plastic on. Keep it pristine. For ever.

Anne McAlpine, voice of Scotland’s Home of the Year invites us into her home