My boycott of all supermarkets is going well. Or it was until yesterday when an ailing Mrs ordered me to get some comfort food for her and some cat heroin for Tara the cat. When Tara sees the fridge opened she starts wailing. The only thing that will quieten her is cat milk. It is her heroin and without several fixes a day she gets very cranky. And so I headed to Sainsbury.
I walked in and staring me straight in the face are s stack of packs of hot cross buns at 80p a bag. For fucks sake it is just two days after twelfth night and already Sainsbury is pushing stock that is meant to be consumed on Good Friday which, for the avoidance of doubt, is March 25th.
When I was a boy our cat ate left overs from the butchers and what he could catch and drank water. And my mother made hot cross buns as an annual treat for Good Friday. The cross on the top actually signified something.
I know that Sainsbury started selling Christmas tuch some time in September but surely it cannot be pushing Easter consumables already? I fear that the answer is that in chavtastic Britain 2016 we are now encouraged to eat Hot Cross Buns all year round - except perhaps at Christmas - just because they taste good. The religious significance has disappeared completely.
I suspect that if we asked members of the ferral underclass who are buying this shit what the cross means, and why we eat buns like this, very few under forty will have the slightest idea.
My sense of alienation from modern life in Britain grows stronger by the day.