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In fact, I've caught the interior decorating bug so badly that even as we speak, a new orange sofa is on a boat over here from Spain, a woman in Norfolk is making me a new bed-head, a local architect is designing an all-glass extension and I've accidentally turned the children's playroom into a utility space so sharp you could use it to crease Ozwald Boateng's trousers.

Did you know you can now buy a metal tube which can be used as a Thunderbirds-style means of getting from the top floor of your house to the bottom? Or that you can now mount speakers that go behind your home cinema screen. Or that Farrow & Ball offer approximately 6,000 different shades of what to the untrained eye is royal blue?

I'm not joking. The choice of things you can do to your house is absolutely endless. And this, naturally, brings me on to Jaguar's website. Since about 15 per cent of my inner being quite fancies an XKR, my eye was caught by an advertisement recently for a new version called the XKR-S.

Intrigued by what sort of treasures this car might have in store, I went to their internet page and discovered that it is only available in black, only available as a hard top, only available with a piano interior and only available with an automatic gearbox and I couldn't help thinking; why? Why, if John Lewis can offer me two trillion different sorts of kitchen chair is Jaguar so belligerent?

And it's the same story with Mercedes. Fancy a new SL63. Right. So how many colour options do you suppose they offer on this £101,000 car? A million? A hundred thousand would seem to me to be a bit mean. But the actual answer is 11. Three standard colours and eight metallics. Although, of the eight, two are black, three are silver and that leaves you with a nasty red, a dreary grey and blue.

Then you get to the massive range of four different interior colours. So you select one and are asked to wait a moment while the Mercedes electrons decide whether that interior is possible with the exterior shade you've selected.

What do they mean by this? Why would it not be possible to combine any two options? Are they really saying that it is unacceptable to have a blue car with red seats? Because I'm sorry, these people are German. I've seen their jackets. I've seen their shoes. And I will therefore not be lectured by them on what constitutes good taste.

Wheels are the most important part of the way a car looks. The Honda Civic appeared in early photographs to be excellent, but then it crept into the showroom wearing a set of castors, and I'm afraid the whole package was ruined.