“What do you want for Christmas?” I asked Domino. She answered very quickly and very definitively: “A robotic dog called Chip, that charges itself on his own platform.”

The answer just made me feel old, and rather sad thinking about Chip The Robotic Dog. When I suggested he would be cold and unfurry, and just make Banger feel all inadequate, she looked at me as though I had landed from Mars.

But Chip The Robotic Dog would certainly be less confusing than the gravy dish I received for Christmas from a certain Godfather when I was about 8 years old. That was probably the first time I remember receiving the thick cardboard box wrapped in brown paper, with an imposing purple ER stamp on it. Inside was lots of scratchy straw and inside that, when you dug deep, was a gravy dish, or a saucer, or a demitasse.

For years and years every birthday and every Christmas these cardboard boxes arrived. Every year I was rather hoping for something other than a saucer. Obviously not Chip The Robotic Dog, but maybe an Adam Ant poster or something…

I have now moved from one home to another in England and the mountain of Thomas Goode boxes have finally been brought up from the cellar, unwrapped, dusted off and put to use.

A complete set of impressive fine English China. In fact, a really Goode one.