Somethings you could rely on in my house as a child. Number one, my nan hated Terry Wogan and would get very cross if he appeared on her TV. Number two, if there was a Sunday night rural drama on the TV my mother would watch it. And number three, just after Boxing Day my grandad would inform me how many shopping days left until Christmas.
Now, this was in the days when Sundays weren’t a shopping day, you’d struggle to get the News of the World and a pint of milk on a Sunday never mind a new 76″ plasma screen TV. Mind you, little’s changed really. You’d still struggle to get the News of the World and a pint of milk – probably settling for the Sunday Sun and a two-litre milk offering.
But my reason for writing this is not to bemoan the demise of the world’s worst newspaper (which he happened to read) or the demise of the pint of milk. No, the point old Fred was making was that Christmas is never actually far away. Soon enough, if you sit there and wait, it will come round again. I’m making him sound wise, he wasn’t… this is a man who struggled to understand the rules of snooker as he had a black and white television… but he was prone to the occasional wise saying, and it was normally festive-themed.
June seems an odd time to be writing about Christmas, but over the next few months many of the food, packaging and processing magazines are planning their ‘planning Christmas’ features, and so presumably most companies will be looking at ‘Christmas’ during the summer. Old Fred was right. Christmas truly never is too far away.
Which means I, with a bundle of potential Christmassy products up my proverbial Sirane sleeve, need to get festive. In June. And start thinking about roasting bags for turkeys, ovenable dividers for pigs in blankets, and other food packaging solutions. Sirane has numerous solutions, so if you’re thinking about Christmas, think about getting in touch.
But there’s one thing Sirane can’t do. However hard we try, we just can’t make sprouts taste remotely nice (or is that just me?)….
MARK LINGARD, MARKETING
