My father was eccentric in many respects; he ate strawberries covered in pepper, and he always let the fizz out of Coca-Cola before drinking it. But don’t for a minute to think he drank it au naturel - it was heavily laced with alcohol.

One of the few times my mother ever lost her temper with him, she happened to be drinking Coca-Cola, not laced and with its fizz. She became so exasperated that she threw her glass across the room, resulting in a wall covered by the drink. “Brilliant!" said my father, and there after he made a career out of painting rooms a dark shiny Coca-Cola color.

He also went to great lengths to find very large oversized ice trays, which had a steel handle-thing you levered in order to release the very large oversized ice cubes, which were then placed in large over-sized tumblers. The size of the cube was everything.

He felt there should be a certain drama not only to the rooms he decorated, and the ice cubes he made but also in the setup of where those drinks were drunk, like at the end of a dock, but he would not approve of the roses and champagne I have placed here, he would have found them terribly unimaginative.