Surely not!

I want you to cast your memories back (if they go back that far) to the halcyon days of British television.

Have you done that?

OK. Now I want you to think about ‘Terry and June’.

A shabby trick I admit. Sorry for the kaleidoscope of things best forgotten that has now come into your mind. But, in spite of everything, I want you think about one particular episode. One, I think, where Terry was in an episode of his own; it took place in a very posh health farm.

There must be someone out there who, from this information, is now thinking and remembering that very episode. Surely? No?

Anyway, apart from the humorous depiction of the illicit trade in chocolate and high carbs operated by staff in the institution for the benefit of inmates and the enrichment of their own corrupt pockets, one incident I remember well, and it has had a deep influence on my behaviour ever since.

Terry had come into the dining room for his first evening meal and was smirking with satisfaction at the opulence and complexity of napery and cutlery which surrounded his place at table and his ability to cope with élan. A waiter appeared and put a filled bowl before him. Terry looked at it and then ostentatiously with the smug satisfaction that he was behaving properly, washed his fingers.

It turned out, of course, that this was the soup course.

What crime can the bourgeoisie commit more heinous than impropriety in public dining? In my provincial, suburban, middle class, snobbish way I watched this amiable buffoon’s antics with fascinated terror. Was it funny? Don’t know. Could it happen to you? Horrific possibility!

Bearing that lot in mind, now come with me across half a century or so.

A meal in the centre of Castelldefels.

Restaurants having been rejected because the food was wrong; the price was wrong; the seating was wrong; the restaurant was closed – at last an Argentinean restaurant seemed to pose no insurmountable culinary problems.

Toni chose roast chicken while I decided to try their tagliatelli with salmon. The meals duly arrived and seemed fine. I was offered and gleefully accepted parmesan cheese. The bread was hot and the beer was big. Everything seemed to be fine. The one thing lacking was ground black pepper – I spice of which I am inordinately fond.

A cursory glance around our table would only spot two glasses, two napkins, cutlery, and a small circular pot of black glass with contents of black and white grains. Obviously a mixture of pepper and salt. And, just as obviously, I sprinkled it generously on my food.

Whatever that mixture was, it was not a mixture of pepper and salt. Each mouthful of food now had an exciting and tooth cracking crunch to it!

What I had taken at first glance for grit. Was, in fact, grit.

A little more thought and my skittish brain worked out that one of the reasons that a stylish jar of grit might be on the table was to allow customers to knock their ash off their cigarettes. This line of thought was too unbearable to continue so I have decided to assume the grit was calcified salt and ossified pepper.

And anyway I am sure that grit will be good for the digestion.

As Baldwin always said, “Wait and see!”