We’ve got a vending machine in our offices.

It’s typical glass-fronted thing that sells crisps, fizzy drinks and chocolate bars. All the usual life-enhancing, health improving stuff you need to keep you going at your desk.

There’s a big sticker on the front that declares: NO NUTS. In capital letters.

That is not a reference to some of the people I work with (though could include quite a few).

It means there are no nuts included as ingredients in any of the items sold.

Why no nuts?

Nuts are becoming contraband ingredients. Food businesses and distributors are too scared to sell them. They fear someone with a nut allergy will buy something, suffer a horrific fit and sue.

So to avoid litigation, they don’t sell anything at all that might in any way contain traces of nuts.

Some schools have declared themselves nut-free zones. About one in 50 primary school age kids have a nut allergy.

It’s the tyranny of fear of litigation.

I appreciate there have been some heartbreaking cases of people with nut allergies who have inadvertently eaten some and suffered terrible consequences.

But this is denying the majority for the sake of a minority.

This is outlawing nuts by stealth. They are silently being removed from our daily intake.

Like cigarettes, they are being made clandestine and contraband.

Soon, we’ll have secret groups meeting in underground car parks, caves and empty warehouses ‘dealing’ in peanuts, hazelnuts and ‘hard-stuff’ like walnuts, brazils and….pistachios!

You might think it sounds nuts, but it could happen.

n There has been an ocean of articles written about the gloomy future and seeming unavoidable doom facing our seas and all the creatures living in them.

They are all either being hoovered up to feed us at an unnecessary rate of knots, or they are being suffocated in a tsunami of plastic waste.

Well, there was some good news this week. The endangered North Atlantic right whale is enjoying a baby boom.

With all that is going on, I’m not sure how these beautiful creatures managed to find a quiet moment to make sweet music together.

Some people listen to whale sounds during a massage or to de-stress.

What do whales listen to to relax and get them in the mood?

Mrs May’s Brexit speeches?