Spare a thought, dear reader, for the man who, on finding himself possessed of a juicy cluster of fine young Aligote or Semillon raisin, is unable to savour their bursting ripeness due to something so simple, but undoubtedly shameful, as an inadequately stocked kitchen utensil drawer. He has no grape scissors.

How he must have struggled and slashed at his mother’s apron strings that bitter day when he deserted the nest and set out, ill equipped, on his journey through batchelorhood! If he’d listened and learned from mother he would not have found himself in this unhappy situation, for no woman of consequence that one has ever encountered has ever been unable, when requested, to produce her very own pair of polished and proud silver plated grape scissors.

As the careful reader can tell, one harbours strong feelings for this titan of the table, this king of all kitchenware. The fat, round grape cannot be halved with any degree of finesse or success without this scissor’s glad employment and a home without a pair is a home without hope. Allow me the indulgence of presenting something of an anecdote.

As a youth, one found oneself sharing digs with a boorish and ill tempered physicist by the name of Rufus Bradbury, whose chief aim in life appeared to be to ruin the Sewell day. It was not enough for this oaf that one allowed him to bring all and sundry back to our rooms, including girls, or that one turned a blind eye to his high spirited, although grossly common, beer drinking. Mr Bradbury had to go that fateful one step too far – to “push his luck”- as one is quite sure he would have put it.

One returned from an especially vigorous meeting of the “Anti Abstraction League” one Tuesday evening, only to find Bradbury reclining, like a Boticelli nude without a care in this world, on the armchair and trimming his grotesque toenails with my very own “Bacchus” grape scissors.

One did not, does not and will never feel any remorse for what happened next. One struck the brute and, as he lay penitent, panting and prostrate on the Persian I ordered him, civilly, to vacate the building.

One discovered, to no little satisfaction, some weeks later that Rufus Bradbury, unable to secure new lodgings and behind in his studies, had taken his own life.

One feels this says it all.