A perfectly clear day in London today meant I had a beautiful blue winter sky overseeing my lunchtime walk.

A sunny day like this is just what these conservatories were made for.

Hang on! I am constantly amazed at how often I can walk past something many times and yet not ‘see’ something that later sticks out like a sore thumb.

It dawned on me today that I had never seen flats with conservatories.

What a brilliant idea! Flats in London (and elsewhere) are almost always built as rectangular blocks. Some may have balconies, indented beneath the floor above, and that was certainly the case in the block of flats in central London in which I grew up over 40 years ago. But this raked design, at the Brunswick Centre, allows for wide, open balconies with conservatories.

In the early days following the construction of this development it was regarded as ugly (back in the 1970s). I remember visiting the cinema and some of the shops when I was a student in the 1980s, and it was certainly a pretty run down place by then.

But how things have progressed. The shops and restaurants are all new, the place is a hive of activity, and a 2-bedroom leasehold flat here will now cost you £600,000 or more!

That’s rather a high price to pay for a conservatory.