It was the chestnuts that did it. As I trudged along Knightsbridge in the murky afternoon light, head bowed against the rain, a damp chill not just creeping through my clothes but (a totally new sensation, this) working its way right under my skin, wondering if the much-vaunted greatness of London was just a big, fat lie, I suddenly caught the scent of something completely unfamiliar. An earthy, 'toasty' smell that rose above the stink of diesel fumes. Warm, comforting and despite its unfamiliarity, a smell that I knew could only be of winter. And then I saw its source: a chestnut seller roasting dozens of big, mahogany coloured nuts on a charcoal brazier fashioned from an old oil drum. It made me smile. Something I hadn't done much that day, despite being in a place I had dreamed of since childhood.

It was November 30, 1976; I had arrived in London early that morning from New Zealand and I was in shock - not because of the long trip or the small-town-girl-in-the-big-city thing, but because of the unremitting greyness. Not just the greyness of the light, the greyness of the buildings, the greyness of a morning fog that had now turned into rain, but it seemed to me, a greyness of the very spirit of the place and the people who lived and worked in it.

Surely this was not the great world capital that I had spent a lifetime reading about? (Major contributor to student debt: my addiction to Honey magazine, followed, later, by Harpers & Queen and Vogue.) And, with Christmas just a few weeks away, where was the famous cheer and goodwill? I was due to fly to Switzerland four days later - and a job as a cook in a private ski chalet - and I could hardly wait. It wasn't just for the prospect of a whole winter's skiing; London was simply too depressing.

So pervasive was the greyness and that creeping, damp chill that I remember little else of my first taste of pre-Christmas London, except that Harrods looked magical with its garlands of lights (in those days a pre-Christmas treat; now just year-round normality and no longer special) and the smell of roasting chestnuts. (I had never seen a chestnut; we didn't have them in New Zealand. I bought a bag. Tasted. Hmmm...burnt nuts. Binned them. Kept the smell.)

Well, I did come back to London 18 months later (summer in the South of France; another ski season in Switzerland; time to grow up and get a proper job). Was hired as press office junior at the cutting-edge fashion boutique, Browns (a bit of a pretending-proper job, maybe but a great RoI on my old magazine addiction). By the end of that November, the trade unions were on the rampage, the Labour government had completely lost the plot and we were sliding into the famous Winter of Discontent. But did I care? Oh no.