'What would you like with lunch? Some of last night's potatoes?'. My sister in law is already getting them out of the fridge - her question is rhetorical. I shake my head, and grab the bag of lettuce and radishes we'd got in our vegetable box from the farmer's market near Mells. I want fresh and crisp, and to be honest, I'm still full from last night's potatoes, slathered with Somerset butter and liberal sprinklings of salt.

Rainbow Valley Farmer's market does online ordering via Instagram. A month ago we went there before lockdown and filled a box with asparagus, courgettes, pineapple, blueberries and crisp bulbs of fennel. We stood in line with a couple from over the other side of the hill who remember rationing after the Second World War. They distinctly recall the rationing of sweets - being young at the time, this would have stuck in their memories. We all agree how lucky we are in Somerset, to live somewhere so beautiful, and to be at least a little distant from the increasing deaths in London. Weeks later, we'll still feel lucky, except we won't be blessed with standing in line chatting to folk with vowels so round you could roll them down these green hills bursting with cowslips, dandelions and primroses. We'll be ordering vegetable boxes, packed for us. The choice? Potatoes or no potatoes. Oh, there will be offerings of punnets of raspberries, and beautiful farm fresh eggs with yolks plump and glistening, bunches of spring greens and oranges most likely from Spain, but always, the potatoes.

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'Ooh, I right fancy cod and chips,' my sister in law says. She sips a rosy Zinfandel in the unseasonably warm sunshine. Bumble bees hover in the budleia behind her, and starlings quarrel in the hedge. I order cod. The thought of more potatoes makes me nauseaous.

Yet, I do have a momentary desire for silky mashed potatoes with strips of garlicky ramsons and spring onions. On Sunday, I had made a vegetable roast with homemade veggie sausages. I made it British style, or at least this family's style, with two sorts of potatoes - roast, and mash. It went against every grain I've ever rubbed my hands over. In fact, I had virtual splinters in my hands serving two sorts of potatoes, but I was taking one for the team. I added my own twist, of course, the roast potatoes tossed with cloves of garlic and torn shreds of sage and rosemary, and the mash was not pure potato - celeriac, parsnip and swede adulterated the King Edwards. I had huge helpings of greens, drowing out the potatoes by miles. I've always had a preference for green.

I remind my sister in law we had potatoes for breakfast. We did - left over mash formed into patties, rolled in oats and fried. I had added fried tomatoes and thyme to mine, and fresh chopped ramsons, which I'm clearly in love with. Somehow everything is better with ramsons. In response to this, she laughs. 'Welcome to Britain!' she says. 'There's nothing wrong with potatoes!'.

But I'm fed up with potatoes. They're stodgy and starchy and heavy, and I've been raised to eat things in moderation. I fail to understand anyone eating potatoes with other carbs - lasagne and potatoes, for example, or potato salad and pasta. It goes against every rule of eating I've ever learnt, and I politely push the potatoes to one side. England is making me furious at the moment and I don't care for any cultural idiosyncracy that suggests eating potatoes for breakfast, lunch and dinner is normal behaviour. England has me locked down and hog tied. I can't move for rules. I can't drive one county over to the sea. I can't go to the pub. I can't walk up Glastonbury Tor, that magical place that calls my heart from overseas. I can't even eat what I want. I can't get almonds, for example, or yeast. We can't go to Tesco because the queues are a nightmare and the social distancing rules are too loud and brutal and a reminder of this year of discontent, where all our dreams have been shattered by a stupid fucking pandemic. Instead, we go to the local co-op and select our food from a very small range, or get farmer's boxes of vegetables people have selected for us. And of course I can't complain, because we should feel lucky. At least we have potatoes.

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I have a rising desire to mash potatoes in people's faces. There. I've said it. The anger and frustration simmer to the surface. I want to mash it in the face of the woman in the village who shouts at her neighbour: 'I saw you go to the shops twice today!' and the people who clap for the NHS but voted in a government who removed funding from it for so long they weren't ready to cope with this global disaster. I want to smoosh it in the faces of the people who endlessly decry the rule breakers - god forbid anyone walk twice a day, or cycle, or go to the beach, or sit down on a park bench to take a breath. I want to throw it at the curtain twitching do-gooding fear mongering citizens who don't analyse the shady maths we're given and don't read beyond the headlines and spurt it back in Facebook threads to create more fear and loathing amongst the most frightened. I want to flick hot mashed potato in the eyes of the politicians who fail to understand that people just like me are struggling to cope with this lockdown, and that they'll be driving the country into economic ruin for dubious figures and projections and reasons that in all likelihood may not have happened, and that people like me would love to throw mashed potato in the cogs of the system and watch them dry like glue so the gears stop winding.

That night, Faith looks at my plate. I've pushed the diced and cooling potatoes to one side. 'You've got a really low tolerance for potatoes, don't you?' she says.

Yes, I bloody well do.

With Love,