Don't knock it till you've tried it.

 Well now that I've tried them I feel that I can knock (but with all due allowances for those that love them) jellied eels. Went with Benjy on Saturday to the wonderful M.Manze shop in Bermondsey. He had the pie and mash (see pic), with which he was very content. I had the jellied eels but they didn't do much for me, even though perhaps I should have gone hard on the chilli vinegar.

But I raise this in the general spirit of trying things out, which I really hesitate to call a bucket list because I think you should be trying new things your whole life on general principle. If you start experimenting when you spot the finishing line, you have probably sold yourself short.

 As anyone following Cro's last year will see, we were never shy in trying new things. And anyone following me will realise that just before my myeloma diagnosis I had spent 2 months criss-crossing America on 5000 miles worth of Amtrak holiday. So trying new things has always been something I have enjoyed. And you never know when you will find something you had never done that you find you really like. I know this has the potential to get really smutty here, but it doesn't need to be just in bed or at the dining table. It could as easily be skateboarding or scything or listening to a Kletzmer band.

I did have one notorious point blank 'No!' when I announced to Cro that I wanted to learn how to do a backflip for my 50th birthday (I had seen the YouTube videos and it looked learnable). She put her foot down with irrelevant comments about caring for a paraplegic not being in her life plans.

But apart from that, I have always found the yet-undone to be inherently attractive. And I have a few things yet to try (but not a bucket list), including for example 

• Go to see an Opera at Covent Garden
• Live in Chongqing, in China 
• Swim in the Pacific 
• Fall in love again
• Eat 'chou doufu' (stinky tofu)
• Cycle from London to Istanbul 

This list is subject to revision and is in principle endless. I have always regarded life the way a six-year-old regards a sweetshop and see no point in changing that view now. 

And before she mentions this in the comments I have to confess to one wilfully counter example that my daughter witnessed in Tibetan Gansu. She was slurping down Tibetan Bubble Tea with rancid yak's butter (and Cro too) and insisted I'd love it. But I dug my heels in ferociously and never touched the stuff. 

I like to think of this as I was trying out 'stubborn refusal' as an experience in itself. And having tried it, I am not going to knock it. 

But all the rest of the time, the answer is going to be 'Yes!'