Happy Friday

The Greens won the by-election! Hooray! There is hope for the future.

And I am well again after being ill since last Saturday.

But we’re still in entertainment fortnight so here is the next instalment…my Times article from 2003 about Dave's addiction to yoghurt.

The history of a habit

If a medical researcher ever discovers that yoghurt is carcinogenic then my husband is doomed.

His passion for yoghurt began in 1971, when he began to dabble in hazelnut yoghurt, made by Ski. He was just becoming hooked on the stuff, and therefore thinking that he ought to stop eating it, when Ski ran a special offer. If you sent them six yoghurt carton lids they would send you a teaspoon with a long handle, a design which enabled the yoghurt fancier to scrape the last trace of yoghurt from the distinctive cartons, which were shaped like miniature cooling towers. Dave cannot resist a bargain, nor can he resist interesting tools, and what is a long handled spoon, after all, but a tool?

Unfortunately he had never heard the saying "He needs a long spoon who sups with the Devil." All too soon we had twelve long handled teaspoons; and Dave was a yogaholic.

When we moved to Sheffield two years later, he switched to natural yoghurt. He says he abandoned the hazelnut variety because it was too fattening, but I know it's because it only comes in 150gram cartons. Longley Farm Natural Yoghurt is available in larger cartons and is powerful stuff - a Class A yoghurt that gives him a high like no other.

At one point he decided he was spending too much money on yoghurt and started to make his own, first in the warming section of our Rayburn and then in a yoghurt maker. But soon he could not make it in sufficient quantities, and we had to supplement it with Longley Farm Natural Yoghurt from the deli down the road. Reintroduced to LFNY, Dave remembered its superiority and he gave up making his own.

By 1979, he was slurping a 450gram carton of LFNY daily. I had to go to the deli every day, because if I bought more than one carton, then more got eaten.

When we went on our annual holiday to Northumberland, the week was taken up in the pursuit of LFNY. Visits to the beach, tours round castles and boat trips to the Farne Islands were interleaved with yoghurt hunts.

We found a source in a Bamburgh greengrocers, and another - though only in small cartons - at a caravan site near Dunstanburgh Castle. But they didn't have enough. There must be dealers in Northumberland with supplies big enough to feed Dave's habit but we never managed to map out a definitive, reliable network. In the end, we resorted to buying a week's supply from the deli and taking it with us.

By 1984 Dave had persuaded the deli to supply him with catering cartons of LFNY. Each of these cartons, made of tough white plastic, with a bright orange screw top lid, has an integral handle. A good job, as these caterers cartons contain 5 kilograms of the stuff.

In 1994, when we moved to the Peak District it was my job to ask the man in the village shop if he could get us two 5 kg cartons every week. He made no comment. He is a discreet man. He gets it from the driver every Tuesday afternoon and stashes it safely in the bottom shelf of his fridge behind the counter, away from prying eyes.

Dave is now consuming three catering cartons of LFNY a week. Every Monday morning the last carton has been cut in half and licked clean (and not by the cat) and he has more than 24 hours to wait for the next delivery on Tuesday afternoon. Sometimes I will make an emergency dash down to Bakewell's Monday market on my bike, where it is possible to buy LFNY, though the price is high.

Sometimes the Tuesday delivery fails to arrive and I scour the Derbyshire Dales for shops that stay open late and have LFNY, an odd 150 gm carton, the normal size for normal people.

 If on a Tuesday we are not home until after the village shop has closed, the shop man swathes a carton in carrier bags and hides it behind the old milk churn outside his shop, for us to collect.

At Christmas when the shop is closed and Dave has to pre-buy his LFNY in bulk, and yet I also need extra fridge space for family entertaining, he keeps his extra cartons cool by floating them in the water barrel behind the shed. This year he put them in the pond, tethering the carton handles to the garden seat.

When he is working away from home and staying in hotels, the LFNY goes with him. The 5 kg carton is too big to fit in the minibar, so he fills the bath with cold water and stands the carton in there to keep it cool.

You might think that I am an indulgent woman. Not true. If you could see Dave on Monday nights vainly searching the fridge for a hidden cache of liquid snow, your heart would melt.

And if you could see his pleasure on a Tuesday afternoon when he unscrews the orange cap and discovers that this week the LFNY is prime vintage, so thick that it is difficult to shake it through the spout, so thick that it comes out with a glug and swirls in the dish, and keeps its shape, just like egg whites whisked for meringue… you would understand.

This spring I planted my sweet pea seeds in catering size LFNY cartons cut in half and filled with compost. As I was drilling the cartons with drainage holes Dave said "Good job I eat yoghurt when you need so many sweet pea pots."

"Yes dear, at £19.80 a week it's a bargain."

p.s. this account is now out of date, as he gets his yoghurt from Aldi these days. It’s not as good as LFNY but it’s much cheaper.