Chocolate Heaven

My office currently looks like a chocolate factory. And there was me trying to get fit for the challenge!

Let me explain......as a result of the 'Chinese Wispas' promotion across my contracts, the wonderful team at Cadbury have kindly donated 1,728 bars of chocolate (Dairy Milk, Wispa and Twirl) to my fundraising effort.

These will ALL be sold to the chocaholics working in Elior at bargain prices. The sale should raise over £600... if I don't get tempted to eat them myself!

Unfortunately, I have always had a weakness for the stuff. It didn't help spending my formative years living above my grandmother's sweet shop in a small Cheshire village.

Before I could even walk, I was found by my parents in the middle of the night, sitting on the floor of the shop surrounded by half-eaten chocolate bars. The fact that I had managed to climb out of my cot, and make my way down a steep flight of stairs into the shop horrified mum & dad, but it did show remarkable cunning and tenacity on my part! Chocolate does that to you.

As you can see though, I was a very happy child. No idea what I was doing sitting in a bucket, but I was obviously having fun. My father used to take a Mars Bar to work every day. He'd keep it in his pocket, and the softer & more battered it became, the more he loved it!

The family addiction tradition continued with my own son, John, becoming a chocolate aficianado.

Here he is (quite a few years ago) keeping his chocolate-coated hands & face well away from 'Rommel' one of my in-law's dogs. Rommel and his brother Monty were Rhodesian Ridgeback / Great Dane crossbreeds, and they also had a penchant for chocolate - or any other food for that matter.

Even though the dogs were much bigger than John, he wouldn't let them near his food. Chocolate does that to you!





On the theme of dogs & chocolate, here's a great photo of my friend's dog 'Brown Thing' on a walk up Ben Nevis. It was thick snow up on the summit, and he had a great time charging around in it.