Are you a picky eater?

I just know what I like. I liked that you could go to the hotels and have a counter lunch, curried sausages, a bit of mashed potato and stuff like that.

Today, it’s all parmigiana. I hate parmagiana! Why it has some of that cheesy stuff on top I don’t know. I don’t like any of that foreign cheese either. Only Kraft Cheddar for me. Everyone complains about that but I like it. It’s what I’m used to.

A lot of things for me are an acquired taste. I first tried a croissant in the 2000s, and I quite like them now.

I also ate my first prawns in my 70s. Back in the day I couldn’t have afforded anything like that. I used to walk past cake shops, and look in my purse and realised that I only had enough money to buy some bread and milk. I was looking after five angry children!

So for me, prawns were a rich persons’ food. It was only much later in life that I could try these things.

Robbie got me to like them. He used to bring them home and brought them to me. The first couple of times he peeled them for me so they were ready to eat.

But one day he put the parcel down and I was waiting for him to peel them. And he said “No, if you like them, you’ve got to peel them yourself”. And I thought, “how rude!” So I very quickly learned how to do it. I didn’t like doing it, but I thought, I suppose I’ll have to.

The first time I said I liked some prawns, He brought me a kilo prawns for me. He only had a few himself, and I had to wait the whole rest of it, which I did very well.

He was naughty, because I got to the stage that I couldn’t tell him the things I like because he’d bring a whole bag full or a box full. I told him I like scorched almonds, so he bought me a whole box!

He used to spoil me. He loved me, and he was a bachelor and he’d never been married before. He’d had girlfriends, but one the one before me emptied his flat out one day. He came home and things had all gone! I was better than that because I gave him a whole family ready-made.

Gwendoline - an art teacher in Richmond - told me one day: “You know we hated your guts when you got away with Robbie Stewart? Because he was the last eligible bachelor in Richmond, and you, you came in the out of town and swooped him away from us.”

Now, I have prawns in the fridge in my room. I can have everything I need right here.