There is a commonly spouted saying in “management speak” that there are the things you know you know (a tiny number), the things you think you know (a bit bigger number), the things you know you don’t know (a bigger number still) and the things you don’t even know you don’t know – you know, the stuff that’s never crossed your radar, which is a very big number of things indeed. It’s a real cliché and I’ve heard several management consultants say it over the years.

I suppose the key thing is that it is actually true, whereas much of what they spout is pure garbage.

The first time I went to the USA for example, I didn’t know that I didn’t know that Americans think the English have bad teeth (see above). That one made me laugh because of course it’s not true and you wonder where folk lore like that started.

Now, every day I learn things I didn’t know. On Friday I learned how to make synthetic vanilla essence, something I’ve shunned since learning how to cook because every cook who I respect says that vanilla essence is BAD and vanilla extract is good.

Over the weekend, while writing up my lab report for the creation of vanilla essence, I discovered that the reason why real vanilla is so bogging expensive is that it comes from a particular type of orchid (OK – my mind already says expensive) and the commercial growers of this orchid, who are more-or-less universally growing it away from its natural habitat (Mexico) and therefore away from the plant’s only natural pollinator – a particular type of bee that can’t live anywhere else. So, the reason for the cost of real vanilla is that every flower has to be hand-pollinated. Yep, some poor soul gets to tickle flowers all day long with a feather or some such just so we can have vanilla.

Then I discovered that the vanilla essence that you buy or that finds its way into processed foods, is a by product of the paper making industry – it basically comes from wood pulp – mmmmm yum, yum, I wonder why I’d never have guessed that one.

I’m learning things that I never even knew I didn’t know. Knowing things you didn’t know gives you teeth. Teeth are good. (Unless they look like these ones, which are, by the way sheep teeth. It’s a complete mystery as to how they ended up on our front lawn but somehow they did so after walking past them over a period of 7-8 weeks, I decided to pick them up and photograph them.)

Last year, when I woke up on the morning of January 19th, I didn’t know that my life would change that day. It’s a year ago exactly that DM asked me to marry him. Whooppeeee!