That is the question?

If you had just a single question to put to a person in order to discover the person’s essential and real character, what would it be?

I know that Toni’s question would be, “What football team do you support?” Any answer other than “Barca” would in Toni’s view tell him everything that he needed to know and he would rest secure in the knowledge that support for any team other than the Catalans (of various nationalities that make up More Than A Club) would condemn you to one of the less salubrious circles of hell.

For some the question would be, “Do you believe in God?” for others, “What political party do you support?” for one or two who I could name, “Where do you shop?”

You could phrase it in terms of ‘either/or’, e.g. “Of the two painters Dali and Miro, which do you prefer?” [The answer to that one is, of course, Miro, because Dali was a shallow, self-publicising fraud. For Toni though the answer could be either, because both are Catalan.]

But I can’t be there to guide you to the narrow snake free enclosure of the saved when The Essential Question rears cobra-like in your face and threatens to strike with mortal force if the answer you give trumpets forth the fact that you are contemptible and vile, without form and void and read ‘The Daily Mail.’

What would my question be? I have given this much thought and rejected such simplistic questions such as “How would you end ‘Edwin Drood’? Or, perhaps, such trick questions as, “If you could save either a run-of-the-mill Giotto or a damn fine Vermeer, which would it be?” I prefer a question to which everyone can relate and reveals far more than literary invention or artistic judgement can ever display.

My question is: “How do you eat chocolate mousse?”

No doubt you can see the multi layered and sophisticated potentiality of this seemingly innocuous enquiry.

Here too Professor Joad’s perennial qualification is of essential importance, “It all depends,” he would have asked, “what you mean by chocolate mousse.” How very true.

Some chocolate mousse seems to be made with more than 100% fat; almost as if the confection has transcended the normal boundaries of time/space and created a universe where a sort of chocolate dark matter has been barely contained in a force field in your pudding receptacle. It also creates an instant addiction and like all addictions, the addicts savagely protect their fix. You try getting ‘a taste’ from a person with a super-fat concoction.

So, what can we tell from the answers to this question?

The speed with which people eat; the wary looks they give other eaters; the way they lick their spoon; how much they put on the spoon; the expression on the face; the way they scrape the dish; whether they lick the container – all of these are significant, but change the question slightly and it becomes even more revealing.

If you ask a person, “How do you eat your Aero chocolate mousse?” there are more factors to consider.

The manufacturers of Aero mousse are remarkable. I know that a mousse, at its best, is light and that lightness is because much of the confection is actually air. If you stir an Aero chocolate mousse you will find that the actual material in the dessert seems to reduce to something more like a smear of chocolate at the bottom of the tub rather then a substantial container filled with chocolate!

If you are the sort of person who is prepared to sacrifice bulk for the intensity of taste which is found in the air denuded solid flavour of the stirred mess then you speak volumes to those who can interpret human behaviour.

Listen carefully to answers to the question and the whole of a human soul will be revealed.

This concentration on mousse is, of course, displacement activity as I have spent part of the day accumulating evidence to confront the evil bankers of HSBC and their cheque losing proclivities to illustrate that they don’t know what they are doing when they are, or not, doing it. The only thing which is troubling me is what I should ask the bank to do; after all an apology cost them nothing and they couldn’t care less if they are not out of pocket.

I shall give it some thought. I am determined to think bad thoughts to produce the appropriate imagination to form the condign punishment which will be the only satisfaction for their duplicitous mendacity.

Blood will have blood!