A beautiful new kitchen? Be careful what you wish for...

Dear readers, you may recall I left you on a downright Dickensian cliffhanger last week, pacing anxiously at the docks, awaiting word of The Kitchen.

Allow me to put your troubled minds at rest. It arrived. In time for Christmas! And I love it more than – apparently it’s considered poor taste to blurt out “my children” – so let’s just say other people’s children. Other people’s kitchens, too.

It is a thing of beauty; clean lines, heated floor and drawers that sigh like Joanna Lumley as they close.

But a new kitchen has unforeseen consequences. It brings joy, yes. But it also creates cognitive dissonance.

I’ve had to up my culinary game by making the most exquisite Nigella Christmas pudding that involves Tuaca liqueur (nope, me neither), marron glacés (£9.99 for a fancy box), panettone (thank God for Asda) and the extraction of enough pomegranate seeds to fill the ball pit at my local soft play centre.

Does it taste good? No idea. I’m too busy spinning sugar baskets and carving an Arcimboldo homage from courgettes.

There’s more. My husband now wants to get rid of the dogs because of muddy paw prints on the surfaces. I want to get rid of my husband because he keeps reproaching me about slovenly spillages unbecoming to the worktop.

What have we become? Please don’t answer that.

My aspirational kitchen has made all my dreams come true – while I’m in it. Once I step over the threshold it serves to highlight how shabby and run-down the rest of the house looks in comparison.

“It’s like walking into Narnia,” observed one of my daughters, gratifyingly. Except she added, “The hall is like the smelly old wardrobe.”

Ouch. And that is why, in the spirit of generosity, I give this advice to Stacey, hankering after new cupboards in the Gavin and Stacey seasonal special. Be careful what you wish for, cariad.