Feeling a bit flat

Bubbles: You remember those, right?

Admit it – you’d seen the stories online or in the papers about a C02 shortage.

And you shrugged. Possibly even said “Meh”, then went back to talking about the football, or how it hasn’t been this hot for absolutely ages.

Well, now is the time to start taking this a bit more seriously. Gas is no laughing matter (with the possible exception of Laughing gas, obviously) and stocks of the C02 variety running out just got very serious - The wholesaler Booker has started rationing sales of beer and cider.

Trade shoppers will now only be able to purchase a measly ten cases of beer, and five of cider. Even carbonated soft drinks sales are being restricted too. Imagine... no fizzy beer, bubbly cider or cans of sugary stuff that makes you burp unnecessarily. Troubling times indeed.

With the hot conditions set to continue into the weekend (and with the footy still on the tele), things are looking bleak for bubbly beverage lovers.

But it’s not just your thirst-quenching tipple that’s at risk. CO2 is used to stun pigs before slaughter (this is getting both disturbing and educational, isn’t it?) so a scaling back of pork-related production could see bacon sandwiches wiped off the menu as well. What next? Will we be forced to eat healthily? Oh, the horror: “I’ll have a hummus sandwich on rye bread please, and some of that lovely spring water... yes, still is OK.” Terrifying.

Even if flat beer doesn’t bother you, and you’re not a fan of piggy-based food, if you have your shopping delivered by one of the big supermarket chains, you could still be adversely affected. Morrisons have already halted delivery of some frozen products, as C02 is used to create the dry ice used in their delivery vans.

So it’s looking bleak. You may not even be able to console yourself with half a tub of ice cream whilst you wait for things to improve.

In next week’s column, I’ll be discussing how lager now costs £50 a pint, expressing shock at the speed with which people started fighting each other in the supermarkets for a pack of streaky bacon, and talking about why the new craze for drinking melted ice cream is both horrifying and delicious.

Or possibly marvelling at whatever daft thing Donald Trump has said this time.

Life’s a gas, isn’t it?

This post first appeared as my "A wry look at the week" column, in The Mail, on the 28th of June 2018. Probably - I haven't seen a copy yet.

I hadn't checked on the paper's website in ages, as they seemed to have stopped putting columns on there, but lo and behold: this one's there, with the title expanded to "I'm feeling a bit flat over gas shortage". I'm back, baby!

Since I penned this column, the situation has got dramatically worse - Warburton's have had to halt Crumpet production. This is the end of days I've been warning you about, people! Hold you children close - our time on this planet is almost over.

Also, lettuce are going to be in short supply because it's been sunny, and we're heading for a drought. Fun times!

(CD A-Z: A new one! John Carpenter - Anthology (Movie Themes 1974-1998). It's got Escape From New York On It!)

The Schaf Shuffle

The weather – source of endless fascination, conversation, irritation and (just recently) excess irrigation. And a fidgety weather presenter on the BBC... I’m endlessly fascinated with the weather, and will confess to making sure I catch the BBC’s updates whenever possible. Not the local ones, where half the presenters look like they got dressed in the dark, or ITV, where they seem to know very little about actual weather, but the national forecasts. Delivered by actual Met Office personnel, their job entails a tricky mix of waving your hands about a bit, explaining about warm fronts without smirking, and trying not to look too pleased whilst mentioning gales force winds and torrential rain. Or stand in front of Cornwall. Each has their own presenting style, but there is one who intrigues me above all the others. Step forward, Tomasz Schafernaker, the 37 year old man from the Met who breezed onto our screens in 2001, as the youngest male ever to point out that it was going to r...

Making an exhibition of yourself

Now and again, it’s good to reaffirm that you’re a (relatively) normal human being. One excellent way of doing this is to go to a business exhibition. Despite what you might have surmised from reading my previous columns, I am employable, and even capable of acting like a regular person most of the time, even joining in the Monday morning conversation about the weather over the weekend, and why (insert name of footyballs manager here) should be fired immediately. The mug! True, there are times, often involving a caffeine deficiency, where it is like having the distilled essence of ten moody teenagers in the room, but I try and get that out of the way when people I genuinely like aren’t around to see it. As part of my ongoing experiment with what others call ‘working’, my ‘job’ involves me occasionally needing to go and see what some of my colleagues get up to outside the office, and what our competitors do to try and make sure that they do whatever my colleagues do better than ...

RIP Jenwis Hamilbutton

We are gathered here in this... (looks round a bit) um... blog, to mourn the passing of Jenwis Hamilbutton. His life may have been short and largely irrelevant, but he touched the lives of so many people that... sorry? Oh. Apparently that was someone else... Jenwis Hamilbutton rose briefly to fame on twitter during 2010, when he was retweeted by BBC F1 presenter Jake Humphrey, having criticised his shirt. A similarly unspectacular claim to fame occurred when a tweet he crafted at 1am on a windy night appeared in F1 Racing magazine. An amalgam of bits of Formula 1 drivers Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button (mostly the hopeless bits), he came into existence via 3 pints of cider, a Creme Egg and the Electric Light Orchestra’s mournful 1986 farewell album “Balance Of Power”, played loudly over headphones. In his short existence, he was followed on twitter by Paul Hardcastle of “19” fame, and a bunch of slightly odd but jolly nice people, whom he was never entirely sure actually exist...

grumpyf1

Search This Blog