I spend my Saturday mornings in church – a church with many aisles, fluorescent lighting, a thousand miles of shelving and a million shiny packages – none of which are necessary to prolong my 21st Century existence.
I spend my Saturday mornings in a cathedral to consumerism – an edge of town Mecca where my weekly pilgrimage brings not absolution or peace of mind but a seething, unrepentant hatred of all those feeble-minded devotees who tread this loathsome path.
There is however sanctuary within.
I seek the Holy Grail which perches on the deli counter deep inside the furthest reaches of this temple to Mammon.
My heavenly reward comes in the shape of a little plastic tray where samples of strange dairy produce I might never – will never – willingly purchase await only the hardiest, vainglorious of souls.
I spend my Saturday mornings in hope not of redemption but a little piece of cheese from some far-flung destination and a chopped up piece of cracker.
Buried in the heart of this cash-craved Armageddon on a disposable dish lies that which has no place here – something for nothing.
My most recent act of devotion began as any other.
I trudged through car park lanes awash with wayward trolleys, wayward children and wayward third-hand Vauxhalls with just a single thought in mind – rapture in a bovine lactic form.
But from the depths of Hell I am set upon by an acned army in uniformed t-shirts proclaiming that they alone know “the real thing” when they see it.
A modern-day Hitler Youth bedecked in red and white and blackheads.
These legions are intent on halting my progress towards fulfilment.
“The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the inequities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men,” said Ezekiel and Sam Jackson.
How right they were, how right.
It emerges that for all this time, all these long years, the globe’s leading purveyor of sweet brown fizzy water has been mistaken.
There is no secret formula to make the whole world sing in perfect harmony.
What the world needs now is not ice cold carbon bubbles on a sun-scorched July day, but a recycled paper label with each of our names printed on it.
“It tastes better with your name on,” says a solider of the Antichrist.
“How so?” I ask.
“It just does,” he says. “What’s your name?”
Words fail me.
“It tastes better with your name on.”
I fight the urge to tell him something…I’m not sure what, but it sure as fizzy water isn’t my name.
I force my way through the apostles and the ranks of the converted, pushing onwards.
I arrive in time to see the high priestess in a hairnet brush the final crumbs of cracker and exotic dairy produce into an otherwise empty plastic bin.
21stcenturysocks 