Notes on chocolate: don’t knock it till you’ve tried it

In sweets as in life, you never know what’s going to work for you

We are looking at universities with my eldest, an entirely new-to-me process since I never went. This has involved lots of trains, laughing and walking. So far the ones she thought she would like she hasn’t and the ones she thought she wouldn’t like, she has. A lesson there.

At a campus university in the West Country I have the great idea of walking into town. The lecturers we speak to think this is a bad idea, the students a good one. Google Maps says it’s 47 minutes. We can do this.

The dark chocolate one has panettone flavouring so that, I decide, will be my favourite

We set off hungry – never a good move – and the long, tree-lined avenue seems to lengthen continuously, like some hideous video game. Lunch, when we find it, seems more about survival than enjoyment. And I have found no shops selling chocolate.

At the station to start the journey home (three trains and two tubes await us) my daughter bats away my hand as I consider buying peanut M&Ms from the vending machine.

But when we do get home something magical awaits us: the Christmas alfajores box from Sur Chocolates, £30. Six discs of pure chocolatey, biscuity pleasure: two white chocolate, two milk, two dark.

The dark chocolate one has panettone flavouring so that, I decide, will be my favourite. The white chocolate one – with, it transpires, an inner heart of nutty ganache – I will eat first, because I won’t like it as much. This is a mistake because it is so good that the other two, although amazing, pale beside it. Another lesson learned.

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