The richest man in Italy died the other day. He had a personal fortune of 15 Billion Euros. His name was Mr Ferraro. He made his fortune from two main products: ferraro rocher chocolates and nutella. I suppose it is nutella that is inside the ferraro rocher. Yesterday I noticed there was a reduction on nutella at Lidl, so I bought a jar for the first time in many years. I don’t know whether the reduction was an hommage to the late Mr Ferraro or just a fortuitous coincidence. I’ve had the nutella on my breakfast rye bread yesterday and this morning and just had another slice with a cup of tea. I think the charm has now worn off. It is a nasty glutinous substance. How melancholy it must have been for Mr Ferraro to look at the vats of this stuff and feel his identity subsumed by it. As a seventeen year old on my first trip abroad in a so-called youth camp in Southern Germany where I went to practice my German and helped build a kinderspielplatz (children’s playground) with about twenty 18-30 year olds – I had lied about my age to get in – nutella was on offer at breakfast. It was my first exposure. It was liberating to eat this goo for breakfast. At home it would have been frowned on. To a seventeen-year-old It represented the continent and doing what I wanted. There was also apricot jam, I recall. Mmm. Fancy a bit if that next time I’m in Lidl.

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