We have these ideas, Olive and me, and these ideas sometimes mean we find ourselves at the big table one evening, with one boiled artichoke each – globe artichokes almost as big as a small child’s head – easing the greygreen flesh out of the base of each leaf. Leaf by leaf by layered leaf. Scrape, scrape, nudge.

We’d taken the bus to Borough Market over the weekend, me in red sandals and a blue bag for pies. No one really shops at Borough Market, of course, except Nigel Slater and the celebrity food writers for the Observer – organic local produce is a nice idea but sort of laughable, after rent, the gas bill, the water bill, the phone bill and, well, red sandals from Spain, for anyone earning a regular wage. We graze at Borough Market, certainly, and we buy guilty slivers of expensive cheese. We point admiringly at the produce, smug in their baskets, and we linger at the stall with the French butter, hoping for samples. But shopping for groceries is not something we do at Borough Market – that’s what the Sainsbury’s down the street, past the off-licences and kebab shops, is for.

Well, hold on to your hat and call me Nige, then, for no sooner had we rounded Southwark Cathedral and come up to the first market stands than we noticed the new stall over on the right, with the signs in black marker reading “Raspberries £1 a box” and “Artichokes 2 for £3”. Faster than you can say “Bobo in paradise”, I had a basket on my arm and was reaching for raspberries here and a bowl of tomatoes there, was weighing giant artichokes in my palm. Olive, in a frenzy, almost, was filling a brown paper bag with fistfuls of fresh peas in their pods. Afterwards, there was – and this is something that has never happened to me – barely space in the tote for pie.

This is where ideas start: in the palm of a hand, in the weight of an artichoke in the palm of the hand.

Some days later, the pies already eaten – there is always space somewhere for pie – the artichokes were on the boil. Households all over England were ensconced in dinnertime, but we were snacking on slices of cheese, still, the artichokes – and the idea – on the boil. Then the leaf-by-single-purple-tipped-leaf nudging-out of artichoke flesh, the cutting into the choke, then the idea for chicken. At 8 the chicken fillets came out of the freezer and I tried to defrost them with my eyes. At 9 I was wondering if stir-frying half-frozen chicken fillets would kill us. At 9:03 I was laughing maniacally in the face of salmonella; the onions went in the pan. Browned. Softened. The garlic. The chicken. A glug of wine. The artichoke. It was maybe ten to 10 by the time we were stirring it all together in a large pot, wholewheat pasta over chopped tomatoes over chicken over artichoke bits. It snowed gruyère.

And you know what? It was really just fine. Curl-in-the-lip fine, not Ooh-girl-you-fine. Who knows what went wrong – too many tomatoes, maybe, or not enough salt. Maybe we should have avoided muddling the flavours, just made a vinaigrette and eaten the artichoke straight up, a fork under one end of the plate so the vinaigrette could collect in a handy puddle down on the other end. I don’t know. What I do know is, the peas are wrapped in a newspaper package on the bottom shelf of the fridge. I am good at shelling peas, though Olive believes he is better. This is where ideas start: in a newspaper package of peas held shut with a red rubberband, in a pea-shelling contest, in the green, ultimately, of a summer market basket.