IF YOU ever fancy a good square meal, don't ever say it out loud.

The barmy bureaucrats from Brussels may hear you and then we're all in the manure (so long as it is manure that conforms to Euro Quality Control sub-section XII, clause five, paragraph 13).

We'd have to have square plates (no side shall be longer than another to within a micro-millimetre), the pork chop must come from a square-backed pig and our potatoes would have to be grown as cubes, which would also fit nicely in packaging.

Take the case of Asda who lost a classification battle for the sale of curvy cucumbers.

If you care to look into the EU rules, EEC No1677/88 lays down quality standards for cucumbers.

There you'll find rampant class discrimination in the ranks of this poor vegetable. To be upper class, a cucumber must be "well shaped and practically straight (maximum height of the arc: 10mm per 10cm of the length of the cucumber). I ask you, who is going to measure the things? And did you notice those metric measurements? No feet and inches there.

The working class cucumber, not allowed in the same box as his upper crust brother, can be crooked - you can just imagine it in a striped T-shirt, mask and a swag bag on its shoulder - but it must not be affected by rotting or deterioration. Well that's all right.

It's the same with bananas. Regulation 3518/93 (2) insists that bananas "are free from malformation or abnormal curvature of the fingers". But bananas are bendy, aren't they?

"Bananas must be presented in hands or clusters of at least four fingers" (like a good KitKat).

"Not more than one cluster of three fingers with the same characteristics as the other fruit in the package may be present per row."

Oh, and where the contents are not visible from the outside, the word 'Bananas' must be displayed. What a relief, I'd hate to go home with a tin of figs.

The EEC has even taken a sledgehammer to crack the problem of nuts. So far they've sorted walnuts and hazelnuts, requiring a minimum amount of nut in each shell. Mind you, I've never yet managed to open a walnut without shattering the stuff inside that looks like a dried brain, so how do you measure it?

So far EU standards for almonds "have not yet been adopted". Phew.

Greece is now a fully-fledged member of the European Union but I did not see the evidence of standards control on holiday in Corfu. The cucumbers were crescents, the tomatoes were the size of footballs and positively hump-backed and grubby. Yet they were delicious.

When ah wor a lad, the grocer displayed and sold potatoes that still had half the field on them, pod peas were weighed stalk and all, and dried peas were in open sacks on the floor with a scoop like with pick-and-mix sweets. The grocer would polish apples on his trouser crotch to get rid of the DDT like a cricketer cleaning his ball. Mind you, my mum always said there was something funny about Mr Eppelthwaite and I should not go in there alone (even though I was 27).

Cucumbers were curvy - or am I looking at the past through rose-tinted spectacles? - bananas were bendy and often offered as a single finger (no gesture of disrespect to EEC officials intended).

There might even be a couple of rabbits hanging outside gazing at customers through wide-open, lifeless eyes. No size or shape regulations, no insanity over hygiene, yet we never fell ill. We were just thankful for the food.

We were so many feet and inches tall, we walked the odd mile to school and we asked for a pound of tripe at the shop. Those rich enough to have a motor vehicle bought petrol by the gallon and paid in pounds, shillings and pence.

All that's gone. We now live with litres, grammes, kilometres, and metric money - and I still can't get the hang of the conversions. Like an English-speaking Italian still thinks in Italian, I think in imperial or avoirdupois measures.

So what does it matter that a cucumber is bent? By the time you have cut it into thin slices to pep up your chicken paste sandwich, you can't tell whether it was straight as a latter-day Methodist or curvaceous as Marilyn Monroe's knuckles.

Updated: 11:26 Tuesday, August 17, 2004