I was thinking earlier in the year, as I walked through the Harlequin Centre, that other towns and cities seem to retain the names of their malls. Watford, I believe has an Intu or is it intu, or at least that is who keeps emailing me their latest offers, which, as it is something of a long way to go for a Saturday shop, no matter how attractive the discounts, I have to bin.

Of course so much that is established is thought by the new young thrusters as looking somewhat tired and dog-eared and in need of a make-over. People make a career out of updating something that is quite serviceable.

It is a trend to renew, often for the sake of change, as if a new coat of paint changes the basic fabric or the service.

However, I digress, for as we were walking through the Mall, which runs alongside Watford’s High Street, we came across a sign offering lunch.

It was not the price of £5.25 that caught my eye but the fact the eatery – housed in one of the high street multiples - was offering “traditional British fare”. I immediately scanned the five-item menu, expecting to see toad-in-the-hole, meat and two veg, brown Windsor soup, fish‘n’chips and cottage or shepherd’s pie.

In a sense I was not disappointed for indeed cottage pie and fish’n’chips were on offer but it was the British antecedents of the other three items that eluded me. Apparently spaghetti bolognaise, chicken tikka and lasagne constitute traditional British meals.

Now I can only hazard a guess as to what the inhabitants of Bologna, the Punjab or Naples would make of such claims for these meals to be regarded as traditionally British. Yes, we do eat enough of them but being a regular and enthusiastic customer does not mean you can take over the restaurant or claim the dishes as your own.

The Brits eat a lot of paella on their holidays and consume gallons of San Miguel but that does render these items traditionally British fare.

I suspect the printed menu that appeared in Intu and numerous other branches of the chain, was written by someone who was born in the 1990s and did not know any better, as with the young contestant on Pointless the other night. When answering a question of assassinations, she decided the person killed In Dallas by Lee Harvey Oswald was JR.

OK, so there is a claim tikka massala was invented in Glasgow or London, but there is no denying chicken tikka per se is Indian.

I remember when we moved to Limousin, a woman from Nottingham rubbished French food. She had moved out to France and was extremely disappointed. “I just cannot understand why France has this reputation for cuisine,” she said.

The fact was she did not appreciate the Brits had hijacked the recipes for trout and sole meuniere, steak au poivre, beef bourguignon, duck a l’orange and numerous other dishes.

“But what other dishes do they do? You get all those in the UK?” she said.

I asked her how many UK dishes you can order in regular French, Italian or German restaurants. Precisely none – and the continentals know where chicken tikka, spaghetti bolognaise and lasagne originate.

“We do fusion in the UK. We mix up various meals,” she protested.

”Quite. The French don’t have to, whereas toad-in-the-hole and brown Windsor has never really caught on much beyond Margate.”

Not, I hasten to add, that I am denying that it is a delight to eat out in the UK. There is a variety of choice but the days of meat and two veg’, have long gone. British cuisine is delightfully cosmopolitan, whereas it was once straitjacketed, unadventurous and boring.

Similarly British supermarkets are filled with various sauces, pastes and spices, which help you obtain the subtleties of foreign taste. Try as I might, I have yet to come across a base paste for shepherd’s pie in any French supermarkets.

Mind you, we did frequent a restaurant in Spain for many years and one night we bumped into the owners who were out for a late-night meal in an English bar-restaurant. “We just love your shepherd’s pie,” they told me.

And I love it too and we have it regularly at home.

There are other English dishes or items I miss and I tend to have fads, possibly fed by the fact we cannot obtain the items in France, which gives them an exaggerated importance in my list of taste-bud preferences. Back in the UK, if Ellie said she had bought some crumpets or hot-cross buns, it would be occasional, valued and thoroughly enjoyed. Some people hate pork scratchings, black pudding, ginger beer, Heinz cream of tomato soup, water biscuits, English crackers, etc but over the past ten years we have tended to bring back bulk consignments of these items.

Hence my claim to having fads, for I am just emerging from my ginger beer fad and in varying degrees all the other items that I thought I had missed.

However, whereas we once drove back loaded with these items, our shopping is more conservative now. We do have a number of Indian curries when back in the UK and Thai meals as well, simply because they are not easily available in France. As for the other items, I suspect it is down to auto-suggestion. You cannot obtain fish’n’chips in France so we tend to indulge in that dish as well, discovering we eat more from the chippies now we live in France than we ever did in England.

Unfortunately I am unable to bring real ale back to France with me. That is probably the biggest single consumable I miss. You cannot obtain that in France or any of our neighbouring countries. Now that is what I rate as traditional British fare.