At this time of year with the cold winds whipping away at your face, when you could do worse than buy a cheap panini as a hand warmer, the appeal of certainty is gigantic. It is a sort of warmth, I suppose.

How much of our lives is used up in active shilly-shallying, sizing up the pros and cons of things that don’t greatly affect us? Recently a dear friend said, “I cannot trust my instincts about anything. I am so often wrong. But what else do I have to go on?” And this was about a coffee order.

It is not for nothing that Keats described that grand, wise, generous ability Shakespeare had of holding opposing realities in his hands without any pesky need to come down on one side or another as “negative capability”.

When I think of indecision, two things are useful to me; call them tools if you will. These are the Cauliflower Purée Model and the Lullaby Paradox.

I am a little obsessed with cauliflower purée. I have never made it — although I read a recipe yesterday in which simmering the cauliflower in chicken stock and single cream was recommended — but I see it from time to time on menus and when I see it, I order it. I have always hero-worshipped white foods. The trouble is, cauliflower purée often accompanies some lump of protein that I am less pleased to see so, in order to achieve the purée, I have to choose something else I may not want.

Yet this isn’t actually true. In almost any restaurant in the land, if you ask with quite a lot of “thank-yous” and “possiblys”, you can order any old thing, so you can ask if you can have a bit of cauliflower purée as well. They almost always say yes. I am fairly certain this is a little metaphor.

The Lullaby Paradox concerns two songs: Lullaby of Broadway (Warren and Dubin, 1935) and Lullaby of Birdland (Shearing and Weiss, 1952). Although I know Lullaby of Birdland to be the superior song musically, with a more complex emotional and psychological current, I actually prefer Lullaby of Broadway, which simply and charmingly allows me to imagine I am a 1930s chorus girl. (All things being equal, that would have been my first choice, as a life.)

This idea that the best thing in the eyes of the world may not be the thing that is best for me is very helpful when making decisions. Also, if I like the less good thing it does not follow that I myself am bad. (This thought sounds better in Latin.)

Sometimes I am beset by the urge to make a decision once and for all about everything and stick to it always. There are certain situations where I have done this in life. These situations concern sandwiches and drugs.

When I was 17, I followed a food-combining diet for a few weeks where proteins and carbohydrates could not be eaten at the same meal. The only sandwich you could really have was a cream cheese and salad sandwich because cream cheese, in the book I followed, had a special status. It swung both ways.

Ever since, I have eaten this sandwich whenever I am in a sandwich situation. It’s perfectly all right, quite refreshing really, but not perhaps what I would have chosen if you had told me I could only have one type of sandwich for my entire life. When I was 20 and very unhappy for a spell, someone told me that if you take antidepressants, even once, your car insurance will be calculated at a substantially higher rate forever. So I have never taken them. But the funny thing is I didn’t ever learn to drive. (A truly excellent way of keeping your insurance premiums right down, you’ll agree.)

Anyway, imagine my delight this morning when faced with an entirely dilemma-free decision. An organisation I am involved with wrote to ask if I would like to go on a trip to North Korea. Me? Me, a woman who is wedded, if not welded, to her chair? Me, the person who felt bold arranging a trip to Wimbledon next month to see a production of Anything Goes?

Thank you so very much for inviting me, I rehearsed my reply instantly, but no. No. I can only just manage as it is. It’s really out of the question.

Although ...

— Financial Times