What I find exciting is the colours and shapes that were possible with new materials and technology

“What I find exciting is the colours and shapes that were possible with new materials and technology. Even in my early twenties I was looking for serious pieces by the best names.”Ironically this is a very different attitude from the young aesthetic of home furnishing in the Sixties. Alderson, aged 30, both collects and deals in Sixties furniture and is perhaps typical of today’s informed young enthusiasts, in that what first attracted him to the period was not just nostalgia for the glamour of the Chelsea Set but an academic interest in international modern design.”I’d read about architects and designers when I was a student and I wanted to collect their work,” he explains. His clientele is predominantly under 40 – young professionals, media types and the odd Britpop star.

Though most of them are too young to remember much about the Sixties – other than hiding behind the sofa to watch Dr Who – they tend to be extremely sophisticated collectors. “They know their subject and want the good names and the right stuff,” says Roberts. “They’re not going to spend pounds 1,500 on a chair unless they’re also sitting on an investment.”When I met Simon Alderson he was lounging on a bright purple seat, created by French designer Pierre Paulin c1968, modelled on the shape of a tongue, and currently worth around pounds 850. Prices range from under pounds 50 for smaller items (early Habitat clocks, plastic desk tidies) to four-figure sums for furniture by big designer names such as Verner Panton, Pierre Paulin and Olivier Mourgue. Add the honey and stir over heat to caramelise the vegetables.Add to the casserole, and turn over heat to glaze.

And Marco found that Damien had worked in a restaurant in Leeds.”Restaurant chefs have always got on well with artists,” says Marco “Jean Cocteau was very close to Fernand Point Toulouse Lautrec was often seen sketching on tablecloths. It’s serious food for the mind, delighting and thrilling in a mystifying way.Each of the partners keeps to his own role, though Damien, a working- class boy, suggested mischievously that Marco ought to put baked beans on the menu. “Yeah, with a piece of foie gras underneath,” retorted Marco.From the same background, the “estate” as he calls it, Marco in turn suggested Damien should hang three flying ducks in formaldehyde on the restaurant wall, the ultimate Sixties symbol of the working-class home. He also began to experiment with furniture: seats shaped like Liquorice Allsorts and jigsaw pieces, sideboards modelled on Dansette record players.

Cool, then store in the fridge for up to a week, or freeze (but for no longer than three months).. I like to think I am a bit of a romantic. And I try not to be shifted from that conviction by the fact that most of my romantic notions are pretty well-worn cliches: giving flowers, holding hands in the cinema, candle-lit dinners for two. I’m inclined to tell myself that it is only the romantically insecure who feel the need for more grandiose gestures – taking their lovers up in hot-air balloons to propose marriage as they drift over the woods where they first made out, and that sort of thing. Paris is a famously romantic city – and the odd weekend there has often proved an effective way to stoke the fading flames of passion in past relationships. But Marie, who is French and has lived in Paris for half her life, finds the city a bit of a bore.

It just so happens that she thinks London is a whole lot more romantic – which isn’t such a bad thing, because that is where we live.
We both agree that running water – courtesy of nature rather than the tap – is a good catalyst for romance, and holidays and weekends away are often planned to be near river or stream. And if anything unfortunate should happen to disrupt the easy flow and ripple of our shared leisure time, I can always go fishing while Marie paints moody watercolours by the river’s edge.In London of course we have the Thames – without doubt an under-used resource for metropolitan romantics. We all get a chance to admire the river from one of its bridges from time to time. But how many Londoners actually take to the water each year? A small single- figure percentage, I would guess. There is a new venture which, if it succeeds, should ensure that a few thousand more get to see the city from the river, rather than the other way around. She’s called the Silver Sturgeon, and she sails from Tower Pier every evening (except Sundays) at 8.30.