Extract from Book 1: London
Day 59 - Woolwich
London
13:00
It’s definitely not my reduced mobility. Nor is it boredom
or even loneliness. No, it’s that I’ve become more systematic in my looting
methodology, more experienced if you like, more professional. That’s what I’ve
been telling myself as I’ve gone through the house room-by-room, drawer-by-drawer.
Whatever it is, it isn’t nosiness. Honestly, it’s not.
Okay, who am I trying to fool? I mean, I don’t even believe
it myself. The jury’s still out on whether I’m lonely, but I am definitely
bored and confined to moving around very, very slowly. Whatever the reason, my
prying has paid off. You won’t guess what I found. No, you have to guess. Go
on, try. Three guesses. Give up? See, I knew you wouldn’t get it.
Easter eggs. Small ones, but bone fide, honest to goodness, thirty
percent cocoa, milk chocolate Easter eggs. You remember the kind, the ones they
marketed to kids, the small hollow eggs in the big cardboard boxes with mazes
on the back and the tips on the side about how to organise your own Easter egg
hunt? Well I found six of them. And no, before you ask they weren’t hidden.
They were in a carrier bag in the dresser in the front room.
---
Some parts of these books are based on my own experiences.
One of which is to stock up on Easter Eggs the first week they appear in the
stores. Usually this is as soon as they clear away the unsold Christmas stock. But this year? Nothing. Well, not nothing. There are Easter
eggs, (and carrots and footballs and toolkits and pretty much every shape that
chocolate can be moulded into), but no £1 Eggs.
The important part of this ritual (for me) is that I’d
always buy extra, ‘just in case there were unexpected guests’ on Easter Sunday.
Of course, when these guests never turned up, I’d get to eat the ones left
over.
No £1 eggs, means no excess, which means no personal excess
the week after Easter. It’s infuriating. Or it would be if I’d not just discovered
that the chocolate in these eggs actually tastes of rust. No, no, it’s true. This
is all to do with the global chocolate shortage, and the different variety of
bean that is being used to combat it. Planet Money did a very interesting show
on it:
After listening to that, if you (like me) have been put off
chocolate, I’d recommend The Nut Hut or Treasure Island Sweets as two
alternatives (I’m not affiliated with them in any way, but I can strongly recommend
them. Particularly the Turkish Delight.)
