Here is my new table! It is solid wood and styled in a convenient pedestal fashion in case you want to pull up some sweet little chairs and have tea on it, and it has a nice Eighties look, I think. While walking to Battersea Park from Clapham Junction, bearing vegetarian treats, Lauren and I happened upon it outside a terraced house, with a ‘FREE’ label taped to it.

‘Take it,’ said the lovely man who owned the house. ‘We’re having a clear-out.’

‘But we’re going to the park,’ we said.

‘I’ll save it for you,’ he said. ‘Come back later.’

Isn’t that lovely? That is particularly lovely. Thus, after a couple of satisfying hours of picnicking and looking at dogs (and dog owners who looked like their dogs) we picked up the table. And then carried it back to Lauren’s. And then discussed how to get it back to Stepney Green.

It’s not really bigger than a large-ish pram, but people on the tube were still astonished.

‘In all my years of travelling on the tube,’ declared one man, in something like awe, ‘I have never seen a table.’

I am glad that I gave him a once-in-a-lifetime experience. I am also glad that I have a nice place to put my computer.

I am little bruised, however.

I do not recommend hauling furniture on the bus, overground train and tube, therefore, if it can be avoided.