How do you feel about furniture. Is a table a table or is itsomething else? (I'll leavePlato alone in his own heavenly furniture shop for the moment.) Let'stalk about a wooden top with four legs or perhaps a grand dining table with an extra leaf and extra legs. That's for when you use the best silver, cut glass, napery and maybe have a butler waiting on you.

I don't mean to be snobby about this, but furniture can tilt peple into some very squiffy angles, especially food critics like AA Gill. Yes, that's the one. He's tangled with the Wesh before. He'sbitter. More than a bit. Bitter as wormwood and the gall.

Unless I misrepresent him, and I'm tryinghardto be fair, he's gone and said it again.Said that anyone who is anyone would not own anything 'as common as a Welsh dresser'.

I ran to the 'phone to tell Emma. (My life is so narrow). 'Bless him. He's really bitter,' she said and we both cracked ourselves laughing.

Peter is nine years older than me. What hasthis got to do with our furniture? Well, everything, once. Not now so much.

My husband (note I nearly always refer to him as Peter but I'll say 'my husband' just to vary things, because he has a perfectly good name and I can't standcolumninst who coyly call their husbands 'him inside' or 'husb' - haven't they got a name, for goodness sake and if so what's wrong with it? -if they were called 'TinTin', Ramboor 'Tarzan' I could forgive the shyness) began his teaching career in London and on a Saturday he sometimes visited the Design Centre, where all the lateststyles were on show.Before we married he had decided we would have Ercol and G Plan furniture in our home. (We've still got it, the club-style teak G- Plan reupholstered in grey flannel from Melin Tregwynt and lookingsurprisingly perky.)

Over the years I've sneaked things in. We have a French linen press, with shelves I've added to hold books. A mirror from an Irishfarmhouse hangs on one wall, a Victorianoccasional table holds a lampand a window seat from the same era has been reupholstered in purple velvet. I've given Emma antique corner shelves and dressing table mirrors I've tired of. (She lives in a three-storey Georgian house so they are more at home there than in my eighties box).

I also have a dining table, with removable centre leaf and matching chairs bought in Llandissillio. You will realise I'm not a purist.

But my younger daughter will not have anything old in the house. Nothingwith a past life goes through her door.She agrees with Feng Shui that old things hold the spirit of previous owners. I agree, too, butI can treasuresomeone else's treasure and look after it.

Although my taste is eclectic,I haveone stricture and I'm strict about it: please, no imitations. An imitation is an imitation and I don't see the point ofreproducing things, especially when old wood mellows to a beautiful patina.

Going off on the squiff for a moment, I stood in Edinburgh Castle, in the same wooden panelled roomwhere Charles 11, Lucy Walter's 'Black Boy', was entertained in the seventeenth century.I felt a very strong sensation of Charles's presence, as though he had left something of himself in the fabric of the room. I can't quite find the words to describe whatI felt so I'll paraphraseOliver and Harry and say: 'Awesome', 'Legend'.

Now, if that had been a Disney mock-up, it wouldhave been nothing more than pink bubble gum stickingto your sole.Some people can't tellthe difference and it's nota problem for them. I don't mean to besnobby.