The work on the Water Treatment Plant is due to begin within the next week or so. The related paperwork is immense, a permit is needed from the Environment Agency and it’s all taking its time. So, in the meantime, I’ve started thinking about the kitchen. Well, not started exactly. It’s been a mission since the day we moved in..

There’s a walk in pantry to the right of the fridge in the photo above and it makes the room so horrendously cramped. I feel as though I’m cooking in a cave. It’s dark. It’s very brown. Water streams down the far wall, steam condensation from the hob. We’ve had a variety of designers around to have a look at it but generally their suggestions are all pretty much the same, knock down the pantry and then update in much the same style as we already have. Nothing particularly innovative there.

I’m coming round to thinking it needs more than an update, it needs imploding.

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Now if you thought Mike had a fondness for boys’ toys and gadgets you’d be right, but it all pales into insignificance compared with anything that is computer based. So his solution to the problem came as no real surprise. A software package would be needed, post haste. I was sceptical at first. I’ve had absolutely no experience of Computer Aided Design (CAD) and the instructions (what instructions?) were totally useless. And let me tell you, patience with such things is not one of my finer points.

After a whole day of trial and considerable error, I’d ‘built’ four walls. I could have drawn the damn thing on paper in a fraction of the time. Heck, I could have had the whole thing physically built in not much more time. Then something went awry. A button that I’d pressed by mistake? Whatever, the screen went totally blank. Might have been the clicking, might have been the cursing. But when an image returned it wasn’t my fledgling plan anymore, it was a kitchen. Bits of one anyway, and in glorious 3D.

It was a kitchen with no ceiling, open to the sky, and with the ‘garden’ showing through the large gaps in its walls. At the bottom of the screen I spied a little round symbol. Click on it one way, the image turns slowly through 360 degrees. Hit it again and the picture zooms in. Before I know it I can ‘walk around’ inside this virtual shell.

I am hooked. Line and sinker.

Suddenly it’s easy. Want a stone floor? Choose the colour, click on the floor. Want a fridge? Select one off the menu, resize it and drop it into place. What could be simpler than that? So here we go, my first experiment with CAD. Crikey, I could go on and do the whole house. What do you think?

Now all I need is someone to construct it. Without removing both of my arms and my legs.