HAVE you ever wondered if food packaging 'use by' dates are simply a conspiracy between the manufacturers and the 'elf and safety zealots?

Every time you seek out the hiding place for that potential killer date, are the former counting on you binning it and rushing to buy a replacement and the latter wanting you to feel so wretchedly guilty for contemplating eating anything you might remotely enjoy that it'll taste of poison anyway?

So one night last week I reach into the freezer and grab a Waitrose Chilli Con Carne with Rice (non saturated fat, honest doctor). Pop it in the microwave, pour a glass of red, and it goes down a treat. Nice and spicy, good texture, beans chewy, very satisfying.

It's only when I'm disposing of the packet later that I glance at the date and spot the words 'use by September 15'. Now the last September 15 we had was six months ago and, while my chilli was in the back of the freezer and might possibly have dated back to an even hoarier September 15, the instructions insisted that, even if frozen on the day of purchase, it needed eating within one month.

Anticipating the onset of some intestinal apocalypse, I took small comfort from the fact that this delicacy was packed in Bracknell and not San Antonio, or down Mexico way in some far flung spot like Chalcatzingo or Topolobampo.

However, side-effects came there none. I slept the sleep of the just, woke refreshed and more than a week later I'm still as routinely unhealthy as ever. Should I suggest that, along with all the Delia and Heston gimmicks, Waitrose launch a 'mature line' in ready meals?

Or perhaps offer my innards to science and put them all out of business?

Either way there's this very nice cottage pie that must be eaten by last August!

YOU miss them when they're not there and can't wait to get rid of them when they are. Not some long lost acquaintance, but the potholes which are regular visitors to the mini roundabout at the Tring Road-Overdown Road junction in Tilehurst.

They appear like dark, bottomless lunar craters, lying in wait for unwary motorists for several weeks and then they're gone. Covered in black top. Until next time.

How much to repeatedly fill one hole, against the cost of resurfacing the road?

Need one ask in a nouveau Third World nation threatening to invade Libya with a mothballed P&O ferry and a couple of easyJet charter planes?