Are some problems not worthy of the name? Are some gripes and plights, by their very nature, invalid? When I heard a friend object to the great number of compliments she receives on the grounds that all the “you have beauteous eyes,” and “your teeth shine like pearls,” make her feel as though men are “trying to chop her up and bury the pieces”, sympathising with her was a stretch. When a pal grumbled at length that the thank you letter she had received from a very distinguished guest had been written in Biro, I had to stifle a frown. To the people who muse, “However much of this dish I eat, it just doesn’t seem to be going down in the bowl,” or “I’ve had so much sleep I do feel groggy,” I may smile a little too brightly.

Yet those in glass houses must not call the kettle black. As a child I was once hit over the head with a packet of cotton wool balls and when my cries of injury were greeted with mirth, it did not feel entirely great. Recently, when I was treated to a delicious tea at the Ritz, my scone contained only one solitary sultana and my disappointment — which no one would take at all seriously — was not the opposite of real.

Is it simply the case that our own problems are sharp and pressing, and when it comes to the woes of others, well, they really shouldn’t be so silly?

Amazingly, it is the people I know who have suffered most in life who are often the most indulgent towards others’ difficulties. “A problem is a problem,” they say extravagantly, which can feel very ennobling, especially when it is the maddening four-day wait for your favourite tights (Wolford Synergy 40 in Admiral) to be in stock again that is under discussion.

I had high-class problems, as they are sometimes called, on my mind. It was the day that the American ambassador to London had caused a storm in a teacup by declaring he had reached saturation point with all the lamb and potato dinners he had been served since taking up his post. He set the figure at about 180. He just couldn’t take it any more. It was ruining his life. I saw a ballet of giant pink cutlets in frilly white paper hats, and glossy crown roasts flying through the air in the direction of the beleaguered ambassador, taunting him wildly. Was the comment pure Marie Antoinette? Had he come to London expecting the streets to be paved with Ferrero Rochers?

Personally, I rather like the same thing to eat day after day. I like food being uniform — nourishing and fresh, certainly, but not necessarily delicious. Delicious food overwhelms me. It is too stimulating. It is best, I think, saved for very special occasions. You might want it on your wedding day, although I definitely ate lamb and potatoes on mine.

Stability and slumber

Plain food, I can’t help thinking, encourages stability, the most important ingredient for a happy life. And it promotes slumber. But did the ambassador have a point? Are the British too unadventurous with our catering? Or was it a quality control issue? Had the ambassador’s lamb been served sludge grey with the texture of woven Wilton (a cuisine one might term “orphanage de luxe”)?

On one level I suspected that the lamb-and-potatoes remark might just be a red herring. Did it point to a deeper concern, a certain distrust of Britain and Britishness? Was there a veiled accusation that the British are stodgy, grey and coarse, and perhaps even stringy.

Perhaps the ambassador was right. I pondered his comments with a mounting sense of bitter irony, for I was expecting a table full of people imminently, and it could not be denied that on the menu was — you guessed it — lamb and potatoes, or, as I was now styling it, to make it seem new and exciting, potatoes and lamb. There were other things, too, of course, but I knew I would have to shoulder a plethora of nauseating “lucky the ambassador couldn’t make it” quips all afternoon. (A problem is a problem, you recall.)

I surveyed the racks of lamb that lay before me on a lake of silver foil, seared in readiness for the oven, and I rather felt on the rack, too. The potatoes, waxy and pale (but not interesting), were not helping matters at all. It seemed to me suddenly that the ambassador might not be mistaken. It could well be time to get a bit more adventurous.

— Financial Times