My man and I have a rule set in concrete when we go out to dinner – I do the ordering. He is not a fussy eater as such but when faced with a list of elegantly printed meal descriptions he goes to pieces. This is a guy who has a collection of university degrees and diplomas as long as your arm; he has qualifications in science, mathematics, marketing and finance - plus is fluent in several languages – and yet to him a restaurant menu is one great unfathomable mystery.

So, I make the selections. This way we get a meal that we both know we can eat, but sometimes we girls like to be looked after, so recently when we went out to dinner I made him do the ordering for a change. I sat back and smiled while he stared at the menu as though it was one of my credit card statements.

Now remember, this guy has a degree in French, and here we were in a french restaurant. He knows what I like to eat and how repulsed I am by the french taste for eating internal organs or oversized, diseased goose livers (quaintly known as ‘foie gras’ but actually a feathered form of cirrhosis of the liver).

Even though university degree French does not seem to cover food descriptions he knows that if he orders poulet he will end up with chicken in some form – so that is what he went for. After much excessive perspiring he settled on a selection for me and assured me I would like it as it involved veau - and I do love veal.

What eventually arrived was something out of my worst nightmare.

He got his lovely poulet and was very proud of himself but as he was tucking in I could only sit in frozen horror and stare at my plate – a huge serving of rognons de veau - veal kidneys – and there seemed to be thousands of them! all over the plate!!

Accusations and denials followed.

Needless to say there was no way on this earth I could ever put one in my mouth so I spent the next half hour making discreet trips to the ladies room with a handful of the things wrapped in a napkin. They went straight down the loo – where they would have gone anyway had I swallowed them.  I decided not to punish him further – he had to pay for the meal I did not eat and to compensate myself I ordered the most expensive dessert on the menu. So there’s a lesson girls; should you ever meet a guy who claims to speak French make darn sure he knows what rognons are before you let him loose with a menu!