One company whose birthday offer I’ll accept is Yves Roches. In fact, I’ll accept it twice. I just love these guys. I have been buying their beauty products for some 20 years. When I was a penniless student in the country rocked by big changes it was more of an aspiration. Pop into a shop in Nevsky Prospect, St Petersburg, looked at all the pretty displays, breathe in all the smells. To actually buy something was a big treat. Then came a central London and a hectic life of a model. My main shop became the one in St Christopher’s Place, London. Perfect location, great range of treatments with all the favourite products. That shop is no longer there. In my present life all the products come through the post, but they have made it even more addictive to me. Firstly, the mail order prices are on average 50% of their shop prices. Secondly, all orders come with presents, and I would give their gift-buyers a special award for sourcing all the stuff - the range is quite amazing. OK, me being fussy most of gifts end up making my teenage nieces happy, but it is the thought that counts! (convenient for visits to the nieces too). The company comes with a great story too - a regular guy using a granny’s recipe to start a worldwide company selling beauty products derived from nature in an environmentally friendly way. And he gave a new lease of life to his village along the way. I must visit the place sometime.

At first there seems to be plenty of choice on the market. Firstly, various plastic and metal storage units. I am told by The Boss to dismiss all of those straightaway. I have to agree they do look pretty hideous. And I doubt they would be very good for the planet. I love the idea of sliding doors on the metal ones but it is not enough to make up for the material. We’ll be old-fashioned and go with wood.

Next problem I hit is the size. It looks like shed manufacturers think any shallow storage has to be short as well. Completely misguided. If I am looking to buy a little wallstore instead of a glorious garage-sized structure that should tell them I am desperate for space. To make the most of space I want a unit that goes as high as possible without me falling out with the neighboughs. That would make it about 6 foot high. Sorry to all the guys still selling the 5ft tall sheds based on the height on the average medieval person, this is the XXI century and we cannot afford to waste space like that.

This leaves me with a choice of pent and apex roof. I would prefer the pent from the space point of view if only the roof was the other way around. For some reason they put on the roofs sloping down from back to front. Being shorter at the front means those precious few extra inches at the back are unaccesible and therefore wasted.

I conclude there is so much improvement to be made in the area. Any shedmakers reading this - please get in touch. I will design and market a perfect shed, you only have to build it at a reasonable cost. Can’t promise I will make you a millionaire instantly, but we’ll rock the gardening world for sure.

Price-wise, none of the small guys can get anywhere near the good old giants. Tesco’s pent-roofed wallstore H184xW181.5xD88 costs £149.97. B&Q’s apex-roofed version provides more space (H2.13xW1.98xD1.06) for only a little more (£159.00). However B&Q cannot offer me an online ordering, I don’t have a van to pick it up from the store and we had a horrible previous experience when the goods ordered in-store for delivery only got delivered after two months, two angry letters and three emotional conversations with the manager later. We did get a good discount for that. We always do. Purely out of principle - it is not really worth it and I would prefer good service to a discount anytime.

So, I am ordering two Tesco wallstores online at www.tesco.com. They are currently offering 1000 points extra for every shed ordered. It will come handy later, I am sure. Every little helps! So far, so good. I’ll keep you posted.