I don't know whether it's true or not, but let's say it is, that the darker an artist's palette becomes then the grimmer the eventual painting. Late period Goya being a good example, whilst some of the works coming from a similar point in the careers of Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko are n't particularly comfortable either. I mean, you probably would n't want to decorate a newborn's bedroom with them.

So there's a possible grain of fact there; I admit it could n't support a thesis, but there's enough to lead me to this: the harder my day gets, the greater my need for chocolate.

I don't smoke, scarcely drink, take no under the counter, or online purchased medications, but comfort in hard times has to come from somewhere, and when there are no friendly arms to fall into, it's only going to come from one source - chocolate.

The relationship I have with chocolate is on the same lines as that between me and my fridge; long periods of benign ignorance, "oh, you're there then...forgotten all about you...", punctuated by short salvos of intense emotion when something has to happen. Like the fridge getting the old heave-ho (explained yesterday); or as tonight, it's me roaming through Liverpool St station, trying to find a shop that sells organic dark chocolate to take away the grime, muck, and misery of a hard day.

My forbidden fruit is n't even going to get me into the index of the Posh and Beck's book of hard living and I can forget all about Keith Richard's. I need something though. Clean living I may be 99% of the time, for that 1% when I'm not, there has to be an outlet. God bless Green and Blacks.