OK – I know that the noble fruit “Doyenne du Comice” (or big fat juicy pear if you prefer) can hardly be described as British, being French as it is. It came to these parts in 1849 apparently. However, along with the French Stick, mayonnaise and a whole load of other gastronomic delights, we now claim it as ours! By the way – you may all be screaming “chips” or “French Fries” at this juncture but of course they are Belgian, not French……though I’m sure the French will happily accept that the marriage of their mayonnaise with their neighbours' chips is one made in heaven.

However, we have embraced (or at least I have embraced) this exquisite fruit as though it is our very own and of course I’m hardly a true Brit in the sense that I was born several thousand miles off these shores in another island nation, though in the rather warmer location of the bottom right hand corner of the Med!!!

It’s one of the great pleasures of late autumn, all at once a contradiction of utterly buttery (and I don’t mean in the nasty, chemically “yellow fat” sense) yet with the obvious flaw of such graininess that makes the experience like eating a condensed milk sandwich that has been dropped on a beach before finding its way into your mouth. I care not one jot that it’s got the look of a warty, flawed, blemished thing. Nor do I care that it has a shape rather reminiscent of my own…..though that is, of course, pure conjecture based on a middle-aged woman’s complete inability to see anything other than bad in her own shape!

Ah – what the hell – I can’t do it more justice than I did last year, just rest assured that this little beauty is the last of three that have made their way from Sainsbury’s onto our table and finally into my tummy.

Last year, I pictured a rainbow, though I fear someone else was holding it in their hand.