The World is divided into two kinds of people...

That can’t be true, can it?

Or perhaps it is. Perhaps the World is divided into two kinds of people. Perhaps the World is divided into the sort of people who like to divide the World into the two kinds of people and the sort of people who prefer not to.

I’d almost be prepared to go along with that.

I was going to talk about something else, though.

I’m not a big eater of confectionary. I don’t have a particularly sweet tooth. As a child I only ate ice-cream because the other kids liked it. I was never terribly fond of it; I would rather have had a chunk of really good cheese.

There is an exception to this. Actually, there are two exceptions. The first is that I have a jar of sweeties on a shelf in my kitchen. OK, there are, in fact four little crystal jam pots, one of which I keep filled with boiled sweets, mostly sherbet lemons and pear drops, but sometimes acid drops or cough candies, sour apples or rhubarb and custards. I go through fads and fancies. I might go weeks and weeks without eating a sweet, and then I might eat one a day for several days in a row. I don’t ever eat more than one a day, though; they’re a treat, you see.

The other thing I like is a Rococo chocolates. Gosh, they’re good! 

When I was a child, the World was divided into two kinds of kids; the kids who liked palma violets, and the kids who didn’t. I was always a little suspicious of the kids who didn’t, but then I was the sort of kid that almost all the other kids were suspicious of for one reason or another.

My favourites of the Rococo chocolates are the flower creams: the rose, violet, lavender, and my very favourite geranium creams: Flowery chocolates for heaven’s sakes!

I recently found out that it has been mooted that space, or at least the ozone layer has a distinct smell, and that smell can be determined by the chemical compounds that prevail there. It is no wonder to me, then, that I was one of those children that liked palma violets. It is no wonder that I love flower creams. 

The ozone layer, as it happens smells of my favourite chocolates and of the flowers that I grow most abundantly in my garden... The ozone layer smells of geraniums... And what could possibly be nicer? If we didn’t have enough good reasons already to want to preserve it, I think this might just trump the lot.

Can I just add that it is my older dort’s twenty-second birthday today, and I would like to wish her a very happy birthday and a wonderful year ahead... and geraniums!