I once had a kitchen that was so small it was uncomfortable being in it. It was a cupboard that someone had put a kitchen into and said of it, it is a kitchen, as if this insult to space was in fact a minor miracle worthy of some small note. If any space in the universe was unloved it was that kitchen and I avoided it as much as I could, eating out, alone or with friends. When I was at home I would shut the cupboard door and pretend that there wasn't a kitchen inside it, always dreading the moment that I needed a snack and resigned myself to opening that appalling cupboard with a kitchen in it. I moved out in three months.

My favourite kitchen, without a doubt, was in the country and was so big only the sunlight could fill it. A couple of horses could have been stabled in it comfortably. It was a journey to get from the fireplace to the far wall, where there were two dressers, old fashioned dark wood relics with deep glass windows in their doors and curtains in the windows. We kept cutlery in a drawer in one of them. One morning, going for a knife, I found a dead mole in the middle of the floor, and the dogs got quietly excited by it. There were always dogs milling about. It was like a film set in which domestic dramas unfolded while dogs lay on the floor and another one just walked up to someone's hand. I drank whisky and reread Kerouac at the table, carved my initials under it, sometimes saying Get back Kerouac, to the dogs like I'm the hipster in the kitchen. And one night I sat and wrote a song with the lyric, renting heaven by the hour 24/7, till I was so full of this curious need to leave for I knew it wasn't my life .

My current kitchen is of adequate size and it is predominately red. I have hung pictures in beechwood frames on it's red walls. The ceiling is white and there is a white Venetian blind in the white window. It overlooks other windows and sometimes when I am washing the dishes I see other people washing theirs. In the late evening seagulls appear as angels above the street lights.