This is a marvellous new feature and one that gives me enormous pleasure to introduce. It is called Up My Street. The premise is simple: we ask someone with exceptionally good taste to build their perfect high street. A fictional one. First up is textile artist Isabel Farchy, who has assembled her ideal parade of shops, cafés and restaurants into one glorious imagined destination: Farchy Street.

Estate agents’ emails are the building blocks of the lists you receive once a month. One thing that throws a property directly into the bin, however, is the word “refurbished”. Enter a thoughtless side return, a marble-encrusted kitchen, hideous spotlights dotted about with the ease of a hole punch. In one slender room I can spot twelve.

I sadly cannot claim one drop of Irish blood in my veins. It is of great sadness to me that my lineage basically sits between the north of England and Worcestershire; there is some Scots which of course I am very proud of, but I would love to ring the bell about Irish lineage and not least for the passport. You too might be like me, a person who pines for the shores of Ireland, we spent much of our time there when we were younger and the Irish kindly put up with us. I have of course always admir