What will you want for dinner, or shall we eat out? A few weeks ago there was the tussle with “Can I have your birthday list?” This resulted in a virtually blank piece of paper. After all, an Aston Martin DB9 is no more likely than being stuck on a desert island with a broody Charlize Theron.

Most of the meals we’ve had out have been pretty dreadful, too. Expensive, badly cooked food with wine unfit for vinegar. The worst being in a Brighton Tex-Mex restaurant, which had a Les Routiers sign above the door. Only after reluctantly paying the bill we learned that the sign was from a restaurant the chef ran in another town some years before. It is just so frustrating when 50 miles away in France just about any restaurant’s 14-euro menu will be scrummy and even the cheapest plonk drinkable. We even tried one of Gordon Ramsey’s nightmare kitchens in Hampshire. Unfortunately, this was before rather than after the great man gave it an effing seeing-to. That one burned down in mysterious circumstances not long after the TV show was broadcast.

The answer can only be cod and chips from the Fish Hut on the beach in old town Hastings. Bought where the cook’s apron is as greasy as the spoons, no Les Routier sign, but a far more valuable certificate from Hastings Beaver Scouts have voted the Fish Hut the best chippie in town. The portions are far too large and eaten while walking between the fishing fleet pulled up on the beach and throwing chips to flocks of gulls hovering above us. Especially baby ones with spotty grey feathers who haven’t learned the tricks of begging.

The only other meal worth repeating is from the Still and West, sitting in the window overlooking Portsmouth harbour. It’s a bit like being in the stern cabin of HMS Victory. Her Majesty’s ships pass about 20 feet away, their crews lined up on deck to enter harbour at eye level with you as they cruise by. Fish platter for two with chilled Muscadet sur lie, please.