Anyhow, three quid doesn't get you too far in London, let alone Notting Hill, but it does give you enough to feel like you're fulfilling nutritional requirements and stop your belly from aching. It doesn't, however, get you a seat - so I'm nipping out to Cullens to bring food back to my desk.

Cullens (nothing on their website) is a sort of mini-mart that you couldn't actually do your weekly shopping in, but is probably useful if you forgot something at Tescos (not that I'd actually know, I don't live round here). It also provides the budding luncher with a selection of sarnies, salads, pasta, crisps, fruit and odd little 4-piece sushi-boxes that wouldn't make a dent in my hunger. I normally get my sarnies from here, but the selection is depressingly limited and never-changing. At 2 quid and over plus crisps makes a weekly lunch bill of at least twenty quid, which is the same as my weekly supermarket bill. Annoying.

But today, I'm not paying - Lunch Buyers are Jon Haley (my first-ever donator) and Edward Farmer (for both, see right). So I'm splashing out their cash and buying a box of fresh soup. From a selection of 14 chowders, broths and creams, I've plumped for the seasonal soup - which happens to be 'Roasted Winter Vegetables with Honey' - a bread roll (still warm, probably from one of the bakers around here) and a Vanilla Muller Rice thing. Good fast and friendly service from the checkout staff, whom I wouldn't dream of embarrassing with a photo as I've got to go in here again when I have to buy my own lunch. Quick walk through the bitter cold back to work and into the basement kitchen to nuke the soup and make a (free) cup of tea. The soup is a bitch to get pleasurably hot despite its microwave instructions, but we persevere for a few minutes more. A quick dash upstairs to my desk where some pringles also await (the free surplus - my last lot got eaten and then replaced. I'd already started on them, so the top inch or two of this tube is a bonus), and the feast begins.