IF reference books are a snare for the unwary, leading them along byways of knowledge far from their intended destination, the internet is an absolute elephant trap.

It's so handy, when checking a name, answering a query or verifying a fact, to click and browse ... and browse ... and surf ... and realise the thick end of an hour has passed.

At least, if you look in a reference book, its accuracy can reasonably be assumed, though a good test is to look up something about which you know the finicky details and see if the information matches up. On the net, it's not quite so easy.

Weasel sites of oddball information are time-wasting, fascinating but unverifiable and often so bizarre they go into the realms of "believe it or not" - anyone here old enough to remember the newspaper strip Ripley's Believe it or Not?

As if that's not enough, people who claim to be your friends bung them on to an e-mail and send you them, so you don't even need to be wandering round the internet to get diverted.

In among a list including the "facts" that coca cola was originally green; that every day more money is printed for Monopoly than the US Treasury; that intelligent people have more zinc and copper in their hair; that bullet-proof vests, fire escapes, windscreen wipers, and laser printers were all invented by women and that Mel Blanc, whose voice was used for Bugs Bunny, was allergic to carrots, was "honey is the only food that doesn't spoil".

I didn't know where I'd start - where I'd find the time - to check all those out, even if I wanted to, but the honey "fact" was confirmed shortly afterwards by a friend in the food industry who was having a rant about "best before" and "use by" dates being far too cautious.

"And what about honey?" he said. "It's got a date on it and it's the only food that never goes off." Being a true-born West Riding man, he is, of course, always right. He's told me so. Often.

True, honey may start off liquid and turn crystalline over time, but even a scraping in a jar long-forgotten at the back of a shelf will still taste just like honey and cause no ill effects if used. I can't think of any other food I'd take that risk with. After all, honey thousands of years old was taken from an Egyptian pyramid and found to be edible. It does make a "best before" date rather superfluous.

It also makes sugar look a proper Johnny-come-lately. It's only in the last couple of hundred years that sugar became affordable for ordinary people and it wasn't known in the Western world at all until Crusaders brought the news back from what we now call the Middle East. As for an aristocratic pedigree, the ancients called honey the food of the gods and it symbolised wealth and happiness.

And there it all is, in a jar on the supermarket shelf, a golden 500g for which bees have travelled 100,000 miles, more than three times round the world, to gather the pollen. That doesn't make a couple of quid seem expensive, given its versatility - everything from a spread for toast via a sauce for ice-cream and a glaze for gammon to a natural healer, especially for burns.

The diversions I found myself on while sorting that lot out of books and web sites is a chronicle of wasted time, but I'm left with one mystery: "pressed" honey. Squashed out of the comb? Maybe one of you is a beekeeper and can tell me.