I rolled over in bed and slapped my alarm clock to submission. The radio played out the news although I was not listening, I had already made my way to the shower to blast some cold enthusiasm into me before I headed out for work.
As I washed, I thought about the date, I don’t know why I was thinking about it, I expect I half-heard it on the radio when I left the bedroom. It was the anniversary. A year today. A year ago that I stopped having meusli for breakfast.
I started having meusli for breakfast after a trip abroad. It was too hot for porridge, and the hotel didn’t have some anyway. I had surveyed the pastries, and being good, avoided them. There would be plenty of time for those, I was staying a week. Not being a carnivorous breakfast eater, I took to the cereal bar, and there it was, quite a good looking meusli, with plenty of fruit and nuts, not that powdery stuff, that dogged my memories. There was extra fresh fruit too, so I formed a bowl, two thirds meusli and a third fruit, perfect.
I am not a fan of foreign milk, I expect it’s fine these days, but the bowl of cornflakes that soured my first childhood trip to the continent had lingered with me. So I bypassed a jug of milk, left open to the elements, and spooned out some yoghurt from the bowl next door. It was open to the elements too, to be fair, but flies probably don’t drown in yoghurt.
That’s how it started. The habit migrated home with me and it had been my breakfast ever since, bar the odd cold start that needs some porridgey central heating. A bowl of fresh fruit and meusli, with a couple of spoons of greek yoghurt. It sounds a bit middle class, but then i suppose I am, inspite of my pretentions otherwise.
That was eight years ago.
It started shortly after that holiday. At first I assumed, as I expect did others, that it wasn’t going anywhere, a special interest group, preaching their thing, that could be safely ignored by everyone, especially me, with my new found liking for meusli. But it gradually grew to a stubborn 5% or so of the population. 5% of the population who were passionate about Marmite.
It seemed like it would hang around there, a vocal but harmless 5%, but then came the guy. The face of the movement. He had the common touch. I read the other day that he had come top of his Common Touch exams at Eton. That would explain it, he was a gifted spokesman, a supremely crafted mana of the people. He lifted the movement into the mainstream and before you knew where you were, the Government decided to call a vote.
I remember discussing it with my colleagues at work. We didn’t exactly know what it meant to be “For” Marmite. Or “Against” it for that matter. My own recollections of my childhood were devoid of any Marmite at all. I tend not to eat things I don’t like the smell of. Even still, being against Marmite seemed a bit mean.
Groups campaiging for freedom of expression took up the baton, how could we deprive people of their Marmite, they asked. I wasn’t sure that was the intention. And there was a lot of patriotism too. The people of Burton-on Trent were vocifiorous in their devotion to the cause. I was pinned down by one on the train, and it lasted all the way to Sheffield. That truck of French pâté was set alight at Felixtowe.
When the vote came, “For” carried the day, overturning all predictions. 52-48. Close, but the lid was not to be put back on.
Parliament spent two long years dragging their feet, before they enacted the law. It was only during that time that it dawned on me the significance of what had taken place. IT seemed there were many ways one could be supportive of Marmite. I did not foresee the direction that was chosed. Every citizen of the land was to have Marmite with every meal. Those of us who didn’t take it very seriously at first, were rudely awoken by the first deportations.
Habits had to be changed.
I stepped out of the shower, put some pants on, a vest too and made my way to the kitchen.
Now I have toast.
