Do you know of Lakeland? If you do, you will have probably smiled and nodded in recognition at my last sentence. If you don't, prepare to have your domestic life changed for evermore. I have never made a mystery of my dislike for house-related annoyances and I won't tell you about it again. I do, however, have a weird soft spot for house-related things and this explains why the simple thought of Williams-Sonoma or Crate & Barrel gives me a frisson of excitement almost on a par with thinking about the bags delicately perched on steel hooks poised on glass tables in Harvey Nichols.
I have spoken to many women about this and we all concur: there is something about the Lakeland catalogue that screams porn from its very cover and it works every time. I spent a very happy, very long time in its company this weekend, over-salivating over the brand new brownie pan (part of the bake to take range, genius), over their bumper pack of 120 assorted doylies (I could fold them into paper doves and use them as Easter decorations), over the vintage-looking Tala icing sets (in tins, I tell you, they come in tins), over the 3-in-1 jelly mould (the possibilities are endless or maybe just three), over the Valentine's Day pages (heart-shaped moulds, heart-shaped sprinkles, heart-shaped pasta, I was in heart-heaven) and over just about everything else. It's all so delectable, so well-photographed, so absolutely useful, so damn good for nothing I ever do that I want to get there tomorrow morning first thing after the vet and buy the entire store, including ten banana guards. Porn at its absolute very finest.
