I’ve been told by those more experience in life than myself that it is harder to be surprised as you age.

I have found the exact opposite to be true.

Every day, I’m surprised by multiple things and some of these things make me question other things until I feel like I should be drinking red wine and eating cheese.

As I’m typing this, my almost 10 year old dog is sleeping with her eyes open. This surprises me.

While she’s generally quite an active dog, when she’s around home, she’s lazy. Surely it would take more effort to keep the lids lifted to closing them? How does she actually do this? Why can’t I do it? Could I learn this with practice? Is the purpose of sleeping eyes open to ward off any would-be attacker? If not, what is the purpose? Does she even know it freaks me out? Is she training me for the possible zombie apocalypse?

Time for a wine…

My bigger surprise this week was over breakfast a couple of days ago.

I chopped my banana, added my bircher muesli, put in a few prunes (while this may be stereotypically an old peoples’ food, they should not be knocked until they’ve been sampled either with muesli or with custard), some pears, peaches and apricots topped it.

Imagine my surprise when I bit down and nearly chipped a tooth.

My prune had a seed in it. I’m still not sure why these are called ‘pits’ except it is ‘the pits’ when you bite down on one unexpectedly while having breakfast. I digress.

Every now and then, a seed does remain in a box of prunes. It must be difficult to sit there day in and day out, removing seeds from plums, then drying and boxing them. A rogue one is to be expected from time to time.

I spooned in another mouthful and ‘crunch’. Another surprise.

I was more cautious with subsequent mouthfuls which was quite wise (wisdom is something I have increased with age though still at the very early stages) considering every single prune had a seed. How could so many have escaped the pre-boxing prune checkers?

I examined the box.

Turns out, it is exactly the same as the ‘Unseeded Prunes’ box. Except this one says, ‘Whole Prunes’.

Surprise number two for the day and I’ve only just had breakfast. It would be a great day.

Then the questions began…

Why would the company use the same packaging? I had been tricked by this previously (this is evidence of my wisdom being in its early stages), so made a particular effort this time to ensure I had the correct box. I even had it in my hands before returning it to the shelves thinking, “Would I finish these before I move?”. I subsequently decided “Yes” and picked them back up.

Obviously I didn’t pick up the same box.

The bigger question this whole thing raises, and this is the red wine question I’ve been discussing with all and sundry this week and no-one has a satisfying answer as yet (maybe because, while being a red wine question, none has actually been involved in any of these discussions):

Why would anyone ever buy a box of prunes, with the seeds, on purpose? 

Time for a wine…

* Thanks to Nik Kershaw for the title to this post. He’s touring with Paul Young, Go West and Cutting Crew at the moment for an 80s extravaganza!