Let me introduce you to David. David is an expert. He lives on a beautiful farm in Spain. David is an expert in many things: almond growing, sheep herding, and wild boar rustling are just a few.

But most importantly David is an expert Chumbos harvester.

What's a Chumbos? A Chumbos is more commonly known as a prickly pear.

The Chumbos tree grows rapidly in the southern parts of Spain, where it turns waste products (pooh to me and you) into fabulous fruit.

My husband Marcus and I went to visit David to marvel at his expertise. Now, David had told us how wonderful this fruit tasted, and I couldn't wait to try it out.

In my infinite wisdom, I grabbed a prickly pear off the tree.

But here's the problem, it's not called a prickly pear for nothing. It's prickly! It does what it says on the packet.

There are tiny pricks of excruciating pain - hundreds of them. They break off when touched and leave their length in your skin. They are almost impossible to remove as they are so fine.

You have 1000s of nerve endings per square centimetre of flesh in your finger tips. It felt like every nerve ending on mine was on fire. I threw the pear to the floor and ran around the farm screaming - followed by a cacophony of farm yard animals.

Well as you can imagine this attracted the attention of David. Did I tell you he was an expert?

Well he quickly appraised the situation (as experts do) and calmly removed the prickles. He then took me by my other hand (the good one) and introduced me to his tool.

It's a great big stick! About 6 feet long, with 6 inches of drainpipe lashed to the end to form a kind of "T".

David then proceeded to show me how you use this ingenious tool. You lean precariously over into the Chumbos trees and balance on one foot. You shove the stick into the Chumbos and hook a pear with the drainpipe. Then with a twisting action you detach a pear and throw it (in one action) onto the ground.

You then roll the pear around on the ground with your foot (obviously whilst wearing shoes) which has the miraculous effect of removing all the annoying prickles. You can then pick up the pear and with a rusty penknife (that appeared from the depths of David's pocket) you can cut open the fruit and get to the sweet bit - delicious!

David is an expert.

You should always listen to experts. They're the ones who tell you what can't be done and why and then go ahead and do it anyway.

My husband Marcus tried this not long afterwards