According to a discussion I’ve just heard on the BBC News channel, in a bid to reduce the UK public’s sugar intake, the size of chocolate bars are to be cut by 20% .

Whether this move, which will dismay chocoholics and singer Marianne Faithfull alike, results in a price reduction of 20% in line with the diminishing size is not clear. Although, I’d wager it won’t!

I fully understand the move from a health objective, and the importance of trying to reduce instances of diabetes, heart issues and other weight related illnesses. However, the cynic in me detects this move by chocolate bar manufacturers is more about increasing income streams.

The cynic in me is a terrible man. Boorish, opinionated, sneering and distrusting of everyone, he can rain havoc with my attempts at taking a positive approach to life. Add to that the fact he ate my bag of wine gums yesterday evening, and it’s fair to say our relationship can be described as strained.

He would argue that he ate my wine gums for health reasons, just as the chocolate manufacturers proffer is the motive for reducing the size of their products. I don’t buy that, though, countering that it was more an act of spite to irritate me.

So today I’m bereft of my normal writing companion (wine gums) meaning I’m having to pen this minus the sugar infusion that ordinarily jump starts my creative juices.

The only consumables with a high sugar content residing in chez Strachan are stale Malted Milk biscuits. When I looked through our teapot shaped biscuit tin earlier, they looked forlornly back at me. I felt the guilt of a visitor at a dogs home who leaves behind the abandoned pooch with the sad eyes.

I wish I could have obliged the softening cookies by removing them from their tinned incarceration. However, as I don’t like Malted Milk biscuits when they are fresh, there was no way I’m going to get my literary sugar kick from a stale cookie.

I feel inordinately tired this morning. Being unable to get comfortable throughout the night, resulted in a restless slumber for yours truly…… That’s the last bloody time I use a hedgehog as a pillow!

Luckily, today I have nothing more taxing than watching rugby, making the Sunday dinner and returning the hedgehog to its hibernation chamber. I feel very lethargic. A torpor the consequence of a poor nights sleep, my need for a sugar infusion and listening to my cynic’s negativity.

There is a big bag of sugar in the cupboard that Karen bought to “….frighten off crows!” I’m not clear why as there are no crows in that cupboard. However, I’ll bear that bird deterrent in mind should I ever become an arable farmer with a crow problem!

Anyway, I’m not sad enough to sit with a spoon tucking into a 450g bag of sugar as a replacement for my gummy sweets. Eating sugar straight out of the bag would be a sad indictment of how low I’d fallen with my wine gum addiction.

Right I’m off for a cup of coffee with 15 sugars!….. And always remember that listeners never hear any good of themselves, many a mickle maks a muckle and that fortune favours the brave.