A long time ago, almost too long to remember, I was an account director for a big market research company and my clients were all confectionary companies. My biggest client was the company now known as Nestle but in those days it was Rowntree. I LOVED that job. I’d spend a couple of days every other week in a pretty nice hotel in York, a beautiful city. Even though we worked hard, we also played hard too. We’d eat at lovely restaurants and generally do our best to make the fact that we were away from our homes and loved ones as painless as possible.

I considered it my duty to try all of the confectionary brands that I was reporting on and would often eat 2-3 bars of chocolate a day. The most annoying fact about that is that I was, in those days, a skinny bird. It’s only in the years since I gave up eating chocolate completely that I have put on weight. There is no justice. I left that job in 1993 and rarely eat chocolate since.

Very occasionally, I’ll have a momentary desire for some chocolate, usually when DM is devouring a family bar on his own then he gets the hump and complains that despite saying I never eat chocolate in fact I’m always stealing his. I suppose in reality I eat about a single family bar of chocolate a year these days in total.

So, imagine my surprise to find I’ve actually been craving chocolate for weeks now. I literally sit here and think about it. Weird! Anyway, today is the day to scratch the itch. I bought a box of Maltesers and intend to demolish them sometime soon. Before though, a photo.

I’m unsure how far across the globe Maltesers spread so if you don’t know what they are, they’re balls of chocolate with a honeycomb centre. Well, I say honeycomb but of course it’s nothing like real honeycomb, as in the stuff bees make. It’s also nothing like the sort of honeycomb that’s made by boiling up sugar and then throwing in bicarb. It’s also nothing like the middle of a Crunchie. It is a sort of similar texture to the latter two things but imagine it made with Horlicks instead of sugary bicarb. They’re made by the American company, Mars although I have a suspicion that they might be a British thing or perhaps a European one. I may have just spent a whole paragraph describing something that’s a global brand so forgive me if that’s so. I don’t get out much!