I have always had problems eating some foods because of their texture. Lately I have been craving eggs and bacon and thought that I would be able to eat this in the hotel I’m currently staying at in London. But I can only eat eggs that are cooked a certain way. Yesterday I decided to order hard boiled eggs with my breakfast but when these arrived they were soft and runny. That actually made me feel ill. I didn’t complain because there was no way to fix it: once I’d been given the runny eggs I lost my appetite, so bringing me another breakfast just wouldn’t help.

This morning I thought I’d order scrambled eggs as the chef can see these and should be able to tell if they are hard or sort. I again ordered hard eggs but when they arrived the eggs were sitting in a big soft mushy pile on my plate. This was even worse than the boiled eggs as I couldn’t see anything but them on the plate. And it’s not just that my concept of hard and soft are strange as the man sitting at the table next to me had been served hard scrambled eggs that I would have had no problems eating. The only hard thing on my plate was the back bacon which had obviously been left for too long under a kitchen warmer.

I really wish I didn’t have this problem with texture. If I don’t like the taste of something (sprouts, for example) I can have them on my plate and just not eat them; but if it’s something that has a texture I can’t cope: once I’ve seen it I can barely eat anything. I see something like mashed potatoes on my plate and the thought of eating them makes me feel physically sick and, not surprisingly, I lose my appetite.

I have always been this way though I was much worse as a child. My mum took me to the doctors once because I would eat nothing but custard. The doctor told her that if I wanted to eat custard then she should let me eat custard. He believed that eventually I would start to eat other things – and he was right.