Should a couple make them just as they are about to marry?

The topic came up for discussion during a lengthy car journey on Saturday.

Would you believe, something as innocuous as a bag of toffees started it.

I'd found the bag in Bloke's glove compartment (does anyone ever keep gloves in there? In fact, does anyone ever wear driving gloves any more and if so, don't they realise how ridiculously racing driver they look?)

In the bag, all that was left were green toffees and a silver liquorice one.

"I take it you don't like these," I said, as I unwrapped the mint and kindly handed him the liquorice. The sacrifices we women make.

"No. You'll understand why," he said.

A few chews in, I did. Not minty, but musty.

"Tastes like… old ladies' knickers," I said.

He shot me a look that said 'Weirdo' and enquired: "Have you got something you ought to be telling me before August 2?"

I told him that it was simply a turn of phrase; no offence to old ladies, or any peculiar perversion, implied.

But seeing as the subject of confessions had come up, he said with a raffish grin, was there anything he should know?

There probably are a few things if I dig deep enough into my past. Haven't we all got the odd skeleton in our cupboard? Something we should have done but didn't, a heart that we regretted breaking or someone's bad behaviour that we accepted rather than finding the self- esteem to walk away from?

But to my mind, these things are best left buried in your past – especially (now, this is key) if you've learned from them and moved on.

So I told him that I couldn't really think of anything and that even if I could, I didn't think we should play the You- Tell-Me-Yours-And-I'll-Tell-You-Mine game. That I knew a couple who did just that only weeks before their nuptials and what she told him was so massive, he never got over it.

They went ahead and got married, but it plagued him until the day they divorced.

Bloke was suddenly incredibly intrigued to find out what a woman he had never met could possibly have done that would cause a man he had never met either to suddenly see her in such a different light.

"Tell me, tell me," old liquorice breath wheedled.

"Well, OK then," I said, settling into story-telling mode.

"You remember back in the Seventies when the recession got so bad there was a three-day week and we had to brush our teeth by candlelight?"

He urged me to cut to the chase.

"Well, she worked as a petrol pump attendant..."

"IS THAT IT?" he exclaimed.