Today my taxi driver offered me his breakfast. Not in a creepy way either. He just motioned towards his patisserie bag with a croissant in and mimed eating. I could have hugged him…This of course is one in a long line of lovely things which happen when you live in a culture which is food-centric.

To really understand a culture that is centred on food, you have to experience it. We in the west think we are centred on food, but we’re not. We think this because we create amazing dishes of immense expense and effort. What we don’t do is what really makes a culture food-centric. We don’t drown our guests in all the food it is possible to produce at one time.

Take my parents for example. My Mum is vegetarian, and so it’s easy to tell when she is welcome. She was welcome here, because on the first night, Madame Halima made 6 seperate dishes, just for my Mum. Thought to be impossible in a country where a meal without meat is completely inconceivable. Had my Mum not been vegetarian, they were thinking of buying a sheep. An entire one. I kid you not.

As for the lies, there is no reason for me to go into detail (I may at a later date) but I have to ask. Do you feel you could ever again respect someone, if they lied so thoroughly that they actually got some perfectly kind people evicted unnecessarily? This has happened to some friends, and though I understand the person in question’s problems with my friends, the fact that he couldn’t settle it in an adult manner is both immature and pathetic in my books. What do you think?