Ready Salted

“Keep it simple stupid,” my inner monologue repeats for the third time since entering the shop. I swear it’s getting harder each time. Today it’s so bad I’m not even sure I want to be here let alone what I want. That’s always been the trick though, hasn’t it? Knowing what you actually want. “You can do anything you set your mind to.” Absolute killer advice for those of us past our prime and still not a scooby who, what, or where that “anything” is. I got a PHD in applied linguistics and still spent the last 2 minutes playing anxious visual ping pong between the Monster Munch and the McCoy’s.

Close your eyes, and picture a standard rack of crisps in your local offie. Visualise the packets, the brands and the colours. Now don’t piss about, this bit doesn’t work if you don’t even try. It’s ok if what you’ve got is somewhat fluid, colours blending and maybe some hybrid logos scattergunned across it all. In my case it’s like Warhol via Uccello shat out by Google Deepmind onto the warping elastic strings of subspace while some Shrodinger’s Lineker is somehow there, and not there at the same time. If that didn’t make sense then may I suggest a PHD in applied linguistics?

Three minutes is my rule. It has served me well thus far in life so I’m sticking with it. Talk to someone at a party and they’re getting boring within three minutes? Talk to someone else. Watching a film and three minutes in you’re still not entertained? Watch something else. Spent the last three minutes juggling nostalgia equally triggered by both Monster Munch and McCoy’s Cheese n’ Onion? Rethink your whole life.

That’s literally all I’ve been doing. I’ve felt a Zimmer Frame push past me, in both directions and the door’s buzzed at least 7 times, while I've replayed the same vapid memories like a sedated witness in the courtroom drama of my own cravings for a snack. They are admittedly both highly flavoursome iterations of an artificial onion and a more gastronome man than me could probably write an excellent review of both. Something about the fetid funk of McCoy’s against the sweat inducing tang of Monster Munch, only, y’know, nicer.

Four minutes. Jesus I’ve broken my own golden rule over two mutually disgusting crisps. Thank all the old gods that my dad had the foresight to hang If… on my wall when I was eight or I would have turned out real pathetic. “If you can decide upon a savoury snack in less time than it took to conceive you, you’ll be a man, my son.” Fuck this I’m cutting my losses, and this train of thought, and my own stagnant bond to the sickening salty snacks of my youth.

Why did I even want crisps? I’m one of those crisps n beer types, never one without the other. Actually, what do I normally get when I’m drinking? Get five pints in me and I seem to make every decision before I’m even aware a decision needs to be made. My conscious mind spends the whole night catching up with whatever situation I’ve found (and at some point I guess must have put) myself in. I need to channel some of that impulsive, assertive decision making that only comes to those aided by the clarity of beer goggles.

Five minutes. Fucksake. Out the corner of my eye I swear Raj is about to come over and ask if I’m having a stroke. He’s a good shopkeeper actually. Plays the character perfectly and I do my best to feed him the right lines but I often feel my performance lacks direction. I’ve never asked him what he thinks about this but being the perfect shopkeeper I don’t imagine he’d tell me. I mean some of the other customers he needs to get on with I reckon Raj has the “right stuff” for a career in advertising. I don’t doubt he’d do a good job at sounding like he was giving it to me straight but that's always the trick with good bullshit, you buy it.

Fuck and Shit that’s it! That’s why I’ve been here looking at the same shelf for going on twice my golden rule now. It’s not my generalised anxiety, or the failed expectations of my parents, nor even my utterly fucking superfluous PHD in applied linguistics. It’s the advertising. I’ve spent the last six minutes circumnavigating the essence of the whole issue. It’s those snakes of sales, those boas of branding, black mambas of marketing, the Anunnaki of fucking advertising!

They’ve got me pegged, and I’ve internalised it all. I go to the shops to acquire a salted potato snack out of nothing more than sheer boredom yet still I need to express my individuality through the act or it somehow isn’t “enough”. I deserve a mass-produced product as individual as me! Anything less would be selling myself short. Hey, that was actually quite good I should tell Raj. He could turn it into a song and be like the “one pound fish” guy of hollow anticap satire. Fuckoff Jonathan Pie, Raj Crisp is here and the public sphere’s not big enough for the both of you.

Right, you cunning lizard cunts, I’m fighting back. What better place than here, what better time than now. This is all just a ride, we can stop it anytime we want and I’m getting off right now for a pack of original and best. Ready fucking salted.

No wait, that's wrong. It’s not the original and best is it? They killed off the not-yet-ready-salted that I remember they still sold at that novelty olden-days shop at the tram museum. I won a whole other packet of crisps from one of them. You open the sachet expecting salt and bang not only salt but also a prize-winning little note, like a fortune cookie but with tangible value. Actually I remember we won another one in the next packet too, maybe even the one after that but I suspect my memory might be exaggerating things to justify the continued maintenance of that particular brain cell. Anyway, that’s something else that used to be free. Whole packets of crisps being given away for nothing more than salting them yourself.

Really if I care this much then I should just make my own. I’ve heard it only costs Walkers like 3p a bag to make them, and they want 60p that? That’s a 2000% markup. That might as well be cocaine, or Pfizer. Fuck that, and fuck this whole shelf too. My moral compass points away from these crispy mountains to the fertile shores of what passes for Raj’s vegetable isle. I’m going to be like Gandhi spinning wool, or Gandhi fighting the salt tax, or just generally kind of Gandhi from here on out. One and a half kilo of potatoes, that’s like 30 grab packs, all for £1.99. Raj can keep the change, he’s earned it. I’ve already got salt and an oven at home, and now, thanks to my innately rebellious nature, something to do with the evening.

Take that, lizards.