Citizens of the world, we need to take a stand… something outrageous has happened. Picture the scene, it’s around 9.30pm and I’ve made an emergency dash to my local shop to make sure we’ve bread in the house. The girls’ sandwiches would have been somewhat disappointing and quite frankly un-sandwich like without.
It’s mid September. It’s still, to be fair, pretty warm. I approach the counter with my loaf, and my eyes are drawn to a large stack next to the counter that a few days before wasn’t there. A few days before it had been Mr Kipling’s Fondant Fancies if you’re at all interested, a regular staple of tea at my grandma’s house.
So what, I head you ask, had replaced the Fondant Fancies and cause such horror and outrage. So much outrage that I’m contemplating an open revolt. Mince pies. I’ll repeat that for the benefit of those of you who refused, like me, to believe it. Mince pies. In mid September. Mince-flipping-people-only-eat-them-at-Christmas-pies.
Now I know once Epiphany is out of the way the shops bring in the Easter Eggs. And to be fair, Cadbury’s Creme Eggs truly should be sold all year round. I could even have grudgingly accepted Hallowe’en merchandise, albeit that would still have been too early in my world. But mince pies in September is just ridiculous.
I mean who, just who, is eating them now. When the football fans chant ‘who ate all the pies’ are they actually referring to the mince pie mystery and offering a damning terrace-based opinion on the crass commercialisation of Christmas. Probably not, but they are right to ask and someone should answer them.
I, for one, can eat about four or five mince pies around Christmas before I’m quite frankly sick of the sight of them. Open revolt… who’s with me?
MARK LINGARD, MARKETING
