I’m on Word as I write this and I’ll try to transfer it without losing it to Safari. A while ago now, when this mess first began, I was making a list of facts about food that I never learned until later in life. You probably know them all, but I’m going to list a few things anyway.

1) Cut out the little green core inside a garlic clove. Sometimes it’s not green.

2) Peel a Portobello mushroom and remove the gills. (I freeze the detritus for soup stock.)

3) Pare the white crust on Brie or Camembert with a vegetable peeler. That way you don’t get a mouthful of dry skin. You can put the peeling into the soup stock bag.

4) Cut lines on the outside of a pomegranate (half, quarter, eighths?) and then slice through, dropping the pieces into a bowl of water. Peel the white part off the arils (nice word!) and you end up with a bowl full of red jewels. I would say tasty but I hate that word.

5) According to the Vogue Book of Etiquette, which I inherited from a favourite aunt, there are two things you can pick up with your fingers to eat. One is crisp bacon, the other is asparagus. I learned from this how to cook asparagus. You cannot pick up limp asparagus.

6) Don’t get too fussy, though. I have a friend who takes half an hour to prepare raisins to go into her breakfast oatmeal, because she picks over each one to make sure no stem survives. Ditto blueberries. I figure our digestive systems can manage the odd raisin or blueberry stem so I let them pass. But I do ream out shrimp if it hasn't been cleaned.

That’s enough. I actually began this on December the first but an angel of mercy came bearing chocolates, wisdom and practical advice about my recalcitrant computers. (Hint: it’s not their fault.)

And so: Happy December the Second.