When I were a lad, and that's not so long ago, when you went to your local purveyor of all things curried, you could purchase, as a sundry item, that most delicious of snacks, the Bombay Duck.

Lying somewhere between an old pork crackling, an anchovy and a piece of driftwood, the taste was heavenly, and the breath it gave you, when combined with lime pickle, a madras, and a healthy splodge of tarka dhal, could stop a charging rhino in it's tracks (of which you see suprisingly more than you'd expect to in Byfleet).

Bombay Duck was an essential part of the curry experience, no less important than the popadum, the naan, or the outsized bottle of Cobra Beer.

Today, you can still walk into half the curry houses in the country, and see there on the menu... Bombay Duck, but can you order it? NO. You get a very polite smile, and are told that there is no Bombay Duck available.

It seems that some esteemed bureaucrats felt that it was in some way unhealthy to import 6 month old sun-dried fish carcasses (Oh yes, for they are truly not duck at all, but fish! I had long tried to discover which bit of the duck these dried remains were from, to identify beak or wing, or web...but I was finally informed that, no they are not ducks at all, but fish, which accounted for the smell of a Russian Trawler lost at sea for a decade; but I digress) and banned their import.

I feel this is an horrific injustice, and we, the people, should rise up and say "You, the unknown administative organs of the state, I want a Bombay Duck and I want one now."

Ahh, to taste the salty fishiness again...