Who will join my Dunkirk cheese raid and break the blockade?
As you might expect of any rational woman with a halfway discerning palate, I muttered: 'I'd rather stick a fork in my eye.' I then looked up the risk posed by listeria infection to healthy women in the UK and found it was very low (currently around 0.23 cases per 100,000 women).
I remembered the women of Sparta who laid weedy newborns out at the Apothetae – a cave at the foot of Mount Taygetus – to test their viability in the face of the elements and thought I'm just exposing this kid to the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune early. So, I continued to feast on Camembert, Roquefort, Berthaut Epoisses de Bourgogne and delectable gooey goats cheese.
I had such bad morning sickness that very few foods weren't immediately disgorged, with the exception of sour dough, full fat dairy products and proper English orchard apples. The pregnant body is a ruthless dictator and knows what it wants to build a vital young human.
But thank heavens I'm not pregnant in the summer of 2025, as a full-scale fromage crisis threatens our shores. It seems that an outbreak of bovine lumpy skin disease in France and Italy has led 'overzealous' Defra bureaucrats to impose a temporary ban on importing any unpasteurised cheeses made in the two countries after May 23.
This means a sudden scrabble to secure cheese produced before that date or a pasteurised version, which in turn means complex paperwork, in mother tongues, that border officials seem unable to process until the product is spoilt. In turn, this means the UK's finest delis and restaurants are running out of their most delectable, sought-after offerings, although there's zero evidence that there's any threat to human health.
Meanwhile, our French cousins can carry on savouring divinely-tasty unpasteurised Brie de Meaux, while yelling at us from Calais: 'Let them eat Cheddar!'
I don't think there's been a bigger threat to the rivalrous nations' precarious, on-off entente cordiale since the 2022 World Cup quarter-final match, when France carried the day (and poor Harry Kane missed a penalty). Personally, I can cede a footie match, but deny me my soft cheese and I might turn nasty. But what this sorry tale really illustrates is the stupendous idiocy of the bureaucrats and politicians in charge of our food policies.
We have just signed a trade deal with the US that may pave the way for all kinds of intestine-challenging gunk. Yet faced with a mouth-watering slice of Ossau-Iraty that poses no known threat to public health, British administrators are behaving like cheese-denying surrender monkeys.
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