It doesn't take a genius to work out that children love to play shop; they never say 'Let's play supermarkets!'

Some kids have never been inside a small old-fashioned grocer or deli, and yet their imaginations tell them to set up a makeshift counter, sell goods on one side, and buy them on the other side. It's so deep within us that science might discover a gene for it.

Supermarket moguls insist that they only give us what we want - though nobody I have ever met actually enjoys shopping in a supermarket. I suppose that we want, or think we want, is cheap food. As someone who never shops in a supermarket, I think differently. That's why I made a deal with top chef and entrepreneur, Harvey Cabaniss, to open a Continental deli on the ground floor of a property I own in London's trendy Spitalfields Market.

To start at the beginning - it wasn't trendy when I first bought the place. Spitalfields, scene of the Jack the Ripper murders, and the Krays favourite watering hole, was a derelict, rat-infested slum as late as 1996. The old fruit and veg market rumbled into life every morning at 4am, and by 4pm, the tramps were lighting their evening bonfires out of abandoned pallets roared up with petrol.

Even my close friends said 'Why are you buying that place?' Now everyone says 'How did you manage to get this?'

The answer to both questions is love. I fell in love with the neglected Georgian building and paid cash for it. By cash I mean Securicor in a van outside the solicitors. Then the owner went to Spain carrying a small suitcase.

The deal had been Buy as Seen, no survey, no nothing, and the next day the District Surveyor came round and glued a Dangerous Structure Notice to the front door.

Never mind. Love is not daunted by obstacles. We opened up a standpipe in the basement, and drilled a hole through the wall to connect to the electricity supply of my artist friend next door. Don't imagine we just needed a re-wiring job; the supply was so antiquated that the Electricity Board took the Voltmeter away to their museum.

For two years I painstakingly put the five floors of the house back together, including entirely rebuilding the flank wall from basement to chimney stack.

The ground floor had first opened as a shop in1805. My building, known as Verde's, had been a fruit importer, and the place was pasted with ancient posters urging me to 'Eat More Oranges.' One day, when I was sitting gloomily stirring a spitting bath of lime plaster, a little old man appeared hobgoblin-like and asked if he could take a trip down 'memory lane'. 'I used to work here as a lad in the '40's' 'What, for Verde's?' I asked. 'No', he replied, 'this was my office here, where you sit now. We was JW FRUITS.'

So the house really did have my name on it.

For some years after the renovation I used the upper floors as my London apartment. The ground floor and basement were waiting for a new life, especially as I had restored the shop-front to its original glory, and even had hand-made lead corbels cast with pineapple motifs. (One of my books, Sexing the Cherry, is loaded with the arrival of the first pineapple in England - yes, it's true I do a lot of fruit).

As soon as word went out that I was ready to open a shop, I was besieged with suitors, and like most suitors, they were all of the wrong kind. Remember, this building began as a love affair; for the shop I needed romance as well as finance.

Out went all the applications for cushions and candlesticks 'lifestyle shops. Out went the Japanese Beauty Parlour. Out went the astronomical amount offered by an American coffee chain, and out went the Plastic Sandwich Company. That wasn't their trading name, but that's what they sold.

I realised I wanted a place where I would like to do my own shopping. A place that was a little island in the sea of corporate retailing.