As the Corner’s designated Victor Meldrew, I feel it incumbent upon me to darken the joy of St. Valentine’s day a little with a grumble.

Opening up my V-day box of Russell Stover chocolates, I note with annoyance that it has no table of contents. A box of choccies ought to have a little illustrated sheet telling you what’s in the various items. This one doesn’t.

It’s not the fault of my significant other, who just picked the most gorgeously over-decorated heart-shaped box. On occasions like this, it’s the thought that counts, and I am satisfied that the thought is all it should be. Still, it wouldn’t have hurt Mr. Stover to let me know which is the praline and which the strawberry creme. As it is, I’m chomping down on these things at random. And custom dictates that I leave a few for the kids when they come home from school. Inevitably, the ones I leave will be the ones I WOULD HAVE PICKED OUT FOR MYSELF if I’d known what was in them. Who the hell invented nougat anyway?

I realize that all this weighs little in the balance compared to the mighty affairs of state we discuss in the Corner, but the subject needs airing. Nor is it altogether without significance. It is not only by the appearance of Post Colonial Studies on college curriculums that the decline of Western civ becomes visible, not only by the spectacle of government power ossifying and dessicating even as it expands beyond all reasonable limits, but also by the failure of chocolate manufacturers to tell us what their productions contain.

Things were different once.