Friday, February 24, 2006

Missing in action


While having lunch today, I mused over the "plastic" cheese slice i was putting in my sandwich. I'm lactose intolerant but for some stange reason these slices of "magic" cheese have no nasty side effects.

Work mate Muzza came into the smoko room and on seeing my cheese slices proceeded to tell a story about how his children demolished a packet on 60 cheese slices in one day. One of the other guys in the lunch room entered into the conversation saying how he missed the Chesdale cheese segments. All of a sudden you could have heard a pin drop. I stopped in horror. I hadn't seen the chesdale cheese segments in the supermarket for years, and suddenly a feeling of loss swept over me. How remiss was I in not noticing a kiwi icon disappearing.

In the immortal words of Rob from High Fidelity.....
What came first, the music or the misery? People worry about kids playing with guns, or watching violent videos, that some sort of culture of violence will take them over. Nobody worries about kids listening to thousands, literally thousands of songs about heartbreak, rejection, pain, misery and loss. Did I listen to pop music because I was miserable? Or was I miserable because I listened to pop music?

So had I forgotten the cheese segments first - or had their omission been the cause of my memory loss. Either way there was obviously some skullduggery on the part of Chesdale to secretly remove the segments - obviously if they were to make their removal common knowledge there would be an uproar. Bastards!

I think "they" secretly rid kiwi icons from our supermarket to slowly wean us onto generic world wide brands. Maybe even the most iconic kiwi brands will one day be a distant memory - and one day we will all be looking at our cup of teas in confusion, one empty hand will waver near the brim of the cup, the memory of the gingernut biscuit, long forgotten, but, in some instinctive sense remaining, as a part of race memory.

What other things have gone missing, taken from us? It's time to make a list before ... I....forget.....

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Frist Lemonade
Raro in a can

Anonymous said...

Or was it the L or the P that came first. That's the real question.

Delmorpheus said...

As a committed believer in the superiority of the griffin's gingernut, and as a long time consumer of them, I am deeply offended by your publication of their image. This is compounded by the fact that you display them on a modern "twin pack" and under this thin veneer of packaging efficiency lies extra plastic trays, you know the ones, they never used to be there.
More power to the nuts!

Mark J said...

Funny, as I did intend to get a photo with a single packet but the only photo I could find on the interweb thingy was a twin pack.

As a true believer in the power of the gingernet you will no doubt remember the original packing was a wax backed paper. A totally more "green" packaging solution to the latest plastic bastardisation - I'm sure you'll agree.

C'mon Del Boy - can you remember back that far?

Di Mackey said...

I can make the list for you ... I MISS stuff over here in the dirty ol' northern hemisphere.

Did find a British shop the other day tho ... had a couple of euro on me and couldn't decide whether to get a Maggi cook-in-the-pot for a casserole 'di-style' or Cadbury's Flake, or tomato relish or ...

Btw, have you seen what happens if you put those cheese slices in the oven and bake them? It's truly terrifying.