Who wants to buy more than three iceberg lettuces anyway?

When I’m a nonagenarian in the Sunny Shores Rest Home, I’ll surely look back on the winter of the iceberg lettuce shortage as the darkest of my life. Has anyone known deprivation equal to Tesco’s current stipulation that no customer may purchase more than three individual lettuces?

I believe it’s my democratic right as a citizen to load up the Ford Focus with Britain’s favourite rabbit food before distributing prawn cocktails (because that’s what you use iceberg lettuce for – right?) to every single resident of my startled street.

Oh, all right then, what I’m actually thinking is: who wants to eat the world’s blandest form of green veg in February when there’s curly kale and Swiss chard as vibrant alternatives? I would list broccoli, but apparently that’s in short supply, too; diminished, like the lettuce, by an excess of foul weather in Spain and the wider Med. You can still pick up a floret or two at the Co-op, so reports of its demise have been greatly exaggerated.

Anyway, it’s the lack of lettuce that has panicked the masses, with one Norwich-based entrepreneur putting an “ultra rare iceberg from US” for sale on Gumtree for £20. All of which illustrates how much our eating habits have changed in my lifetime. My mum wouldn’t have dreamt of serving salad in winter – not when she could massacre a harmless cabbage in a pressure cooker. Lettuce was a light summer treat to be served with cucumber, half a tomato and a nasty, vinegary drenching of Heinz Salad Cream.

But soon, cheaper, swifter freight did away with grocery seasons. By the 1980s iceberg lettuce was as popular in the UK as it was in the States, its inoffensive crispness making it the green-of-choice for vegetable loathers everywhere. You could claim it as part of a healthy lifestyle (although it’s low in nutrients and high in water), while secretly blessing leaves that seem designer-grown to scoop up half a tub of blue cheese dressing. There’s none of the challenging bitterness that comes with learning to like watercress. In short, sticking with iceberg lettuce is the gastronomic equivalent of the boozer who won’t progress beyond sweet Lambrusco.

So I’m not sad we’re experiencing a shortage right now. Perhaps it will persuade the timorous of palate to branch out into radicchio. Yet I can’t help wondering if the supposed dearth of iceberg is part of a cunning plan to ramp up its popularity with consumers. Six years ago Marks & Spencer reported sales of iceberg had dropped by 35 per cent, while purchases of exotic bagged salads had risen by a corresponding amount. We all know we don’t value commodities until it’s hard to get our mitts on them. Remember the great cauliflower crisis of November 2015, when Cornish caulis peaked too early because of autumnal sun, leading to an early glut, but later shortages?

The crisis spread around the globe when poor weather in California led to “poorly formed heads”, resulting in a cauliflower being offered for sale in New Zealand for a stonking $10. But I tell you what I noted: not an absence of cauliflowers from my table, or restaurants, but a great big transatlantic boom in cauli sides and recipes. The same phenomenon arose when a plague of diamondback moths attacked British crops last December. All I can say is that I’ve never seen or eaten so many sprouts, served so many delicious ways, as I did this Christmas.

In similar vein, I expect to see a massive resurgence of iceberg lettuces, bathed in Thousand Island dressing and served by hostesses dressed like Margot Leadbetter, at dinner parties up and down the land. I was amused to hear that trainee priests at Westcott House, down the road from me in Cambridge, shocked their congregation by holding a service that used gay slang as part of the liturgy. It reminded me of a church service in I attended in Sevenoaks with a classmate’s family when I was a teenager. The vicar played the congregation a radio play, in which St Paul and the Angel Gabriel assessed key figures from the Nativity on their life and actions in a celestial court. A shepherd was judged harshly, because although he witnessed the birth of Christ, he retreated into inertia. But Herod was viewed sympathetically, as a leader trying to maintain stability under difficult circumstances. My hosts were outraged, but I found the arguments intensely thoughtprovoking and still do. Above all, I was relieved not to have been bored for an hour. Perhaps some of the Westcott worshippers felt the same.