If The Cap Fits...

So having taken the kids to Cadbury World and finding myself channelling a couple of comedy legends (a weird hybrid of Jim Carrey and Eric Morecambe) I thought it would be simply hilarious to pull a face on one of the rides that you simply have to go on while you're there.

No. You really do have to go on them. There is no way to get from one part of the factory to the other except by bizarre toyland tram-car through the disturbing dimensional rift that is Chuckleville.

Being an old hand at Cadbury World I knew there was a camera positioned halfway through the route that takes candid snaps of interlopers as they crawl their way through the alien landscape of chocolate bean land that you then feel morally obliged to buy and hide away in the loft (kidding yourself that this is the only copy and the good people of Cadbury World burn all the negatives).

Wouldn't it be a jolly jape, I thought, if I was gurning like a good 'un at the moment the flash went off and oh how we'd laugh when it came time to pick up the photos?

It having been a number of years since I last played the Comedy Club I was missing the uplifting shot in the arm that is reactive laughter so I thought, what the hell, I'd go for it. It might even cheer up some of the Cadbury staff who looked like they'd been injecting chocolate like a cheap form of botox.

We went on the Chockie Bean public transport system. The camera flash went off. The picture was taken. And we went to collect our photo.

To quote a Danielle Dax album: "Comatose Non-Reaction".

Nothing. Na-da. Not a titter.

"Hmm," I thought to myself, "Either the good staff at Cadbury World are one paracetamol away from suicide or I'm losing me touch."

I'd pulled my best blimmy and put my glasses on upside down and everything. That should have had them rolling in the aisles.

Instead there was not a dickie-bird.

When I got the photo back I could see why.

There was utterly no effing difference in my appearance from when I look "normal" to when I was pulling the face that Jim Carrey would have paid good money to be born with.

I looked exactly the same.

I'm not quite sure what that says about me but I have no doubt at all you'll all be queuing up to tell me.

My Cadbury’s Ball Is Broken

To a certain degree I am my own jailor.

Due to certain job parameters that I must fulfil I carry about me more ironmongery than Harold Steptoe. I am literally weighed down with keys. I am a prime candidate for curvature of the spine and a dowager’s hump.

I shouldn’t need so many keys because one of those in my possession in supposed to be a master key (one key to rule them all) but this is a conceit. It isn’t really a master key. It opens most but not all. There are facilities and security add-ons to the building suite that require their own especial keys. And that’s before you take into account building changes and random acts of locksmithery that have further seen the suite of keys that I haul about with me augmented to the point where I am carrying the combined weight of the Mir Space Station and Anne Widdecombe around with me at all times.

This is hard on the ol’ trouser pockets.

Every woman I meet thinks I am pleased to see them but really I’m just prepared to open a few doors.

I reckon I’ve gone through more trouser pockets then the Artful Dodger. In fact, I no longer have pockets. I have express elevators straight down to my shoes.

I dread to think what all this ironmongery is doing to my thighs. I’m amazed I am not black and blue at the very least or regularly splinted up in a hospital bed. Because any key-ring that I carry about with me tends to be obliterated within 6 months.

I had a Lego brick key-ring once. A perfect little red 2x4 Lego brick that could have been used within any building project and not looked out of place.

It is now a sorry sight indeed. It’s crisp corners have been bashed and rounded down. It’s perky little studs have been flattened and worn smooth; the “Lego” moniker utterly obliterated by the violent action of clashing keys. It looks like it has been half melted in a furnace.

I always knew my thighs were hot stuff.

The loss of this key-ring grieves me. But worse, much worse than this is the loss of my Cadbury’s Ball key-ring.

I say ball but actually it was a little silver and purple representation of the globe that span round inside a metal ring (not on the correct astronomical axis I have to say). I bought it at Cadbury World last year and was a much treasured possession (as indeed are all balls that I keep in my trouser pockets). It was doubly treasured because Karen and I took the kids back to Cadbury World a month or so ago and found that Cadbury’s are no longer marketing these little spinning globe key-rings.

I had something that one day could well have been a collector’s item.

More fool me then for allying it with the keys of Beelzebub. ‘Cos they’ve done for it good and proper. The rod on which it span like a spit roast (steady there, people) has been bent out of line. The globe no longer spins. This is the day the world stood still.

My keys have claimed another victim.

And this worries me. Because my keys spend the entire working day swinging about very close to another treasured possession of mine. A possession of a personal biological nature. A master key that I was born with and that has given me a good deal of pleasure over the years.

I really don’t want this to be the day that the earth never moved again.

I think it might be time to invest in a key chain.

Or at the very least stage a massive break-out.

P.S. I’m talking about abandoning the prison regime, not freeing my beloved master key from its trousery confines. Just in case you were wondering.

But I Only Had Four

Possibly I am being paranoid. Possibly I am being over-sensitive. Possibly I have developed a heightened siege mentality that is even now interpreting everybody’s cheery salutations as ballistae and cannon set upon bringing about my imminent downfall.

But this is chocolate we’re talking about here and it don’t get more personal than that.

My addiction to the cocoa bean is legendary. Not just around the workplace but worldwide too. I have in my possession a personal letter of apology from the Kraft MD for their callous take-over of Cadbury’s and a promise that they will not (upon pain of death) fudge the recipe for Cadbury’s Dairy Milk.

Actually I faked that letter but that’s not the point.

A big bag of chocolates were brought into the workplace on Monday for all us office types to share. I did, I admit, feel a slight modicum of guilt as I threw one of these chocs down my throat for I had actually paid Cadbury World a visit the previous week with my wife and kids and I had brought nothing back for my work colleagues at all. Not a bean. Literally.

In my defence I had limited funds, don’t give a jot for my work colleagues and tend to put my loved one’s first in matters of chocolate.

So sod ‘em.

But plainly there is a work colleague here whose grip on their chocolate is weaker than mine. The bag of chocolate was deemed fair game.

By the lunchtime of the first day though it had disappeared. It had been locked away to be “preserved for those work colleagues who were not on duty today but would be in attendance tomorrow”.

The unspoken accusation being that people currently on duty would, if given continued carte blanche, wallop the entire supply of chocolate down their masticating gizzards without a second thought for those colleagues who couldn’t be arsed to come into work today and grab themselves a piece with their own fair hands.

Well, tough. I say, sod ‘em again.

However, being of known chocoholic persuasion it was hard not to take the withdrawal of chocolate privileges as a personal attack. Infamy, infamy, they’ve got in for me, etc.

Now, I know for a fact that in the particular bag of chocolates that had been brought into the office there must easily be approximately 40 pieces of chocolate. I know this for a fact because my wife and I made our way through an identical bag at home last week (over the course of several days I hasten to add) and kept a rough tally on how many were in there.

I only had 4 chocolates out of the bag in the office. 4, goddammit. 4 out of 40+.

There are 7 of us in the office which means, if we were being mathematically fair, we were each entitled to 5.71 pieces of chocolate. 5.71. That’s practically 6 each and I doubt if even Professor Brian Cox would quibble with my maths.

I only had 4.

I had less than someone else in the office. But I feel like I am the one being persecuted.

Why? Why do they persecute me?

I hope they all find themselves on the road to Damascus soon.

I am more sinned against that sinning.

Honest. Now I feel so low I could do with a Boost.

Touch My Body

At least once during the average working day I will heed the call of the chocolate. Usually around the mid afternoon point I will get the urge to consume a quantity of cocoa based confectionary. My hit usually takes the shape of either a Yorkie or a Dairy Milk bar. My supplier is just around the corner, barely 50 yards away, and exists in the shape of a little downtown newsagent. His proximity means I can sneak out, score some choc and be back at my office desk before anyone even knows I am gone.

I have the procedure down pat.

And by and large it works well. Except when the normal shop assistant has the afternoon off and is replaced by Jabba The Hut. I don’t know what Mr Hut’s problem is (apart from a low metabolic rate, an underactive thyroid gland and man-boobs that could envelope Katie Price) but he plainly doesn’t have the energy or the enthusiasm to “customer face” effectively.

He refuses to move out from behind the till.

And when I say “behind the till” I really mean behind the till. He wedges himself in there so tightly that the cash drawer must create an S-bend in his colon every time he rings up a sale and his back must bear the imprint of shelf after shelf of Benson & Hedges.

Worst of all is when it comes time to pay for a purchase. I select my bar of choice. I drop it onto the counter to indicate that, yes, this is the bar that I want to get orally intimate with and I hold out my loose change (being mathematically astute enough to work out in advance how much money I must hand over to him to avoid accusations of theft). At this point the normal shop assistant – if she were present – would stretch out her hand also. We would bridge the counter with our arms and meet half way above it whereupon I would place the money easily into her hand.

Not so, Mr Hut.

His hand stays more or less adhered to his gut but as a small concession forms a small palmy plateau into which I am expected to drop my hard earned wonga. I have to practically bend myself double over the counter to achieve this. Anybody passing by would think I was making a pass at the big moody brute. He then compounds this act of rudeness – for that is what it is – by scooping my change out of the till and again offering it to me in the same agoraphobic manner. I have to reach over, one leg out like a snooker player playing a bridge shot and try and retrieve my rightful change at full stretch. As I do so my hand grasps unwholesomely close to his cardiganned moobs.

It’s infuriating.

I have been tempted to throw my money at him or even to drop it onto my side of the counter... but I suspect it and he will merely sit there glowering at me until I rescind and push it closer to him.

I could go elsewhere for my chocolate treat, I suppose, but nowhere else is as close or as convenient. My afternoon sneak-outs would be in danger of being rumbled (if I haven’t already rumbled them myself with this blog of course).

And I daresay some of you might suggest I just give up the afternoon chocolate scam altogether – much the easiest solution... and better for my health and my wallet.

But really! Give up chocolate?

Are you effing crazy?

Come on, people. Serious, workable suggestions only, please.

Carry On Cadbury’s

I’m probably jumping onto the bandwagon a bit late here but Kraft + Cadbury’s = bad news.

I’m not talking about the risk to investor’s money.

I’m not talking about the probable future closure of factories (given Kraft’s past track record).

I’m not even talking about the inevitable jobs losses despite Kraft’s “you’re all safe, you are, honest” protestations.

No. I’m talking about the important thing. The chocolate. ‘Cos for all Kraft merely want to grab Cadbury’s bubble gum marketing network they will inevitably mess with the chocolate recipe. They’ll cut corners. Go for cheaper nastier ingredients. Like greedy street corner pushers they’ll start cutting it with baking powder and sawdust and horse tranquilizers. They’ll bring out an American version that’ll taste slick and plasticky like a Hershey’s bar. They will eventually commit the ultimate sin and call it candy.

Can you imagine that?

Cadbury’s Candy?

I’m dry heaving even as I type.

To mess with our chocolate would be sacrilege of the highest (lowest?) order. But the desecration is inevitable. Like Vikings raiding a Saxon village Kraft will tear down our temples, smear faeces on our altar cloths and make us worship the goat headed god of candy pseudo-chocolate.

I’m stockpiling now. Dairy Milk, Caramel, Fruit & Nut, Wispa, Boost. My loft is becoming a chocolate warehouse. Bursting at the seams with all that is good and wholesome about Cadbury’s before it’s too late. Before (to paraphrase Merry from Lord Of The Rings) all that is good and brown about our chocolate is gone from the world. And then there won’t be a Shire, Pippin.

And there won’t be no Curly-wurly neither.

You see, my biggest fear is that my personal chocolate stash will become a shrine. A DNA database for chocolate to remind us of what good chocolate once tasted like. A few dusty bars held in suspended animation that nobody dare consume or brought out of cryogenic storage solely to be minutely sampled by rogue scientists to try and rediscover and replicate the old magical recipe.

And then we’ll be into the realm of genetically modified chocolate. A world where interplanetary companies like the Tyrell Corporation control and tailor our chocolate eating experience in line with intergalactic legislation. I tell you now the motto “more chocolate than chocolate” will be our undoing!

Oh good people of earth clasp your Fruit & Nut to your bosoms! Defend your Cream Eggs to your last breath! The heathens are even now on our doorstep and pissing into our hot chocolate!

Or am I just over-reacting?