Wednesday 24 December 2008

searching for shortbread
through desperate shoals of men
as if it’s the end

Christmas appears to have crept up on me silently and then pounced. I seem to always assume it’s at least two weeks more distant than it actually is.
I felt constrained, having been released early from the secret government bunker, to do a final bit of shopping, although I was fairly sure we already had everything in.
‘Shortbread biscuits!’ the Ugly One shouted down the phone to me while I waited at Victoria for the Westbound District Line.
The Tesco Metro was like some budget version of Hell where stressed looking people ran hither and thither with seemingly no clue as to what they were looking for. I just wanted shortbread biscuits and small sausage rolls, none of which could be found.
I hied it to M&S where I discovered a tin of organic scottish shortbread biscuits, but only their pork and cranberry sausage rolls which I can confirm are, since I have already sampled them, an abominable hybrid of foodstuff.
I decided not to try Sainsburys, since Dante no doubt has already covered that fairly well, and there would be no point in my reporting it. Besides, their habitually empty shelves would almost certainly include sausage rolls, and I was too tired to even consider using my nectar points to bribe the manager.
So, I returned home sausage-roll-less, and we ordered Indian food from our local restaurant as a Christmas prelude.
Several vodkas later and full of biryani I crept off to bed.