The keepers of the sprout

With the possible exception of charades, no element of a British Christmas rivals the Brussels sprout when it comes to dividing families. In any well-ordered family, the sprout is a source of fierce disagreement, with those that love the vegetable on one side and haters on the other. There is no Third Way of the sprout. This gulf of opinion is highly satisfactory for those of us who love sprouts. It transforms a liking into a badge of honour, even gallantry, as we tuck into sprouts like so much green candy while siblings, wives and children turn pale at the sight.

When the Rennie family was first posted to the Belgian capital, a small part of me worried that the ‘Brussels sprout’ would prove to be a linguistic joke, and that they might not exist here at all. It was a needless worry. The Sunday market in our scruffy, friendly borough of Saint-Gilles is not just home to heaped piles of Brussels at this time of year.