What I dislike even more than boring food, is food which you imagine is going to be really exciting and original, but turns out to be just boring.

Expensive restaurants do it - they do it in spades. I could recant numerous stories of times I've been out for dinner, seen something on the menu and thought "Ooh, that sounds good." and when my meal has turned up it has looked really quite superb, but when eaten turned out to be just a bit dull.

The triumph of style over substance is what it is - a metaphor for modern living where everything is advertised as great but turns out to be pretty bland and uninteresting underneath the glitter and hype.

Today's dinner was a bit like that - it should have been great, it should have been fantastic, but what it was was a bit boring and half of it didn't get eaten. Shame on me I say, but I just couldn't face the whole lot.

The dessert was the same too.

And it was all so promising to begin with - top quality ingredients, some I'd never had before and was looking forwards to trying - everything in the garden looked rosy but was really just a pile of scabby old weeds.

I don't think it was that I'd done anything wrong in the preparation. The pasta was just how it should have been, the duck was cooked just right and the vegetable mix had just enough flavour to add some contrast, but it was still boring.

I do know lots of people who would have thought this was 'just divine', but they are boring too.