The Avon Street conspiracy

Sooner or later, like it or not, you have to go to Bristol.

Maybe you develop an uncontrollable urge to queue for half an hour or more to buy Swedish flat-pack furniture in a low-ceilinged warehouse that reeks of meatballs.

Maybe you want to test your cultural credentials by trying to spot a Banksy among all the other graffiti.

Or maybe you just took a wrong turning at the Hicks Gate roundabout and found yourself inexorably sucked in.

No matter. Whether it’s fate or fortune that draws you to the sprawling metropolis on Bath’s doorstep, once you’re there you know you’re there.

Because on every other billboard, it seems, is a poster advertising a well-known supermarket chain that doesn’t have a major outlet in Bath.

An advert which states, in no uncertain terms: “The Big Price Drop on Bristol’s Shopping List.”

For better or worse, for richer or poorer, when you see a poster like that you can be pretty much certain that you are. Indeed. In Bristol.

Struggle back to Bath with your Nordic kitchen units or your shattered dreams – or both – and all those certainties crumble to dust.

Because - or at least until yesterday - right next to the exit from Avon Street multi-storey car park was a similar poster advertising the same supermarket. But there’s one subtle difference. Because this poster said: “The Big Price Drop on London’s Shopping List.”

Tesco advert, October 19 2011

Now hang on a cotton-picking minute. London? London? What’s going on here?

Well, Tesco (oops) is certainly a powerful organisation.

But surely even Tesco (oops again) can’t have got its hands on some transdimensional wormhole generator that rips Avon Street car park, the jewel in Bath’s architectural crown, from its noble setting between a neglected river and a dreary coach park and drops it 100 miles east in The Big Smoke?

No, there’s more to it than that.

That poster was the visible tip of the iceberg, a deep and insidious conspiracy created by big business, the council and the powerful Heritage Lobby to confuse Bathonians, tourists and taxi drivers alike into believing that they’re not in Bath any more.

And why would they want to do that, you might ask? Well any number of reasons, really. But to go into them here would be to expose oneself to unwanted attention from the conspirators themselves.

Suffice to say that there’s more to that drilling project next to Thermae Bath Spa than meets the eye.

Chip advert, October 20 2011. Spooky.

Plus the fact that the original poster was replaced by an advert for chips on the very day this article originally appeared in the The Bath Chronicle.

Enough said: a nod’s as good as a wink to a blind bat.

If anyone has the slightest idea what’s going on down there at Avon Street, please keep it to yourself. Don’t write in, don’t email, don’t call. Because the less we know about it, the safer we’ll all be.

And if you’re one of those people who prefers to believe in cock-up rather than conspiracy (perhaps you think the poster is just a mistake), then sleep easily while you can.

But remember: truth will out.

Denmark bans Marmite - this means war

By the time you read this, there will more than likely be a war on.

A war between countries traditionally seen as allies. A war between two former close friends, linked by common threads of history and heritage, proud bastions of democracy, freedom and justice.

Yes, dear reader (or readers, if there’s more than one of you left by now), before these words reach the public domain, it can confidently be predicted that Britain will be at war with Denmark.

You’ll probably know why. As reported widely in the media earlier this week, Denmark has banned Marmite.
Say it again slowly for full effect: Denmark. Has. Banned. Marmite.

There’s little more to say, but a lot more space to say it in, so let’s expand for a while on that ghastly thought.

It’s one of life’s great constants that you either love Marmite or you hate it. And if you hate it, you’re wrong. Fact. No arguments, please.

Marmite is the spread that made Britain great.

Marmite is to us Britons what the druid Getafix’s magic potion was to the Gaulish warrior Asterix.

Marmite takes mewling toddlers and moulds them into 16-stone second-row rugby forwards.

Marmite braces you at breakfast, lifts you at lunch and succours you at suppertime. A world without Marmite would be pale, insipid and downright unsavoury.

Yeasty, salty Marmite is packed with vitamin B12, niacin, thiamin, riboflavin, celery extract and lots of other good stuff.

And that’s what those dastardly Danes don’t like. Back in 2004 they passed a law banning the addition of vitamins to foodstuffs. Now, seven years later, they’ve started to enforce it, and Marmite is vanishing fast from the supermarket shelves of Copenhagen, Aarhus and Esbjerg.

Not that it was ever much of a hot product in the land of Hamlet, little mermaids and Sandi Toksvig. If you ever visit a real Danish supermarket, you’d be hard-pushed to find anything that doesn’t taste of smoke. Or caraway seeds. Or both.

Let’s lighten up a bit. Time for a Danish joke. Q: Where do you hide a slice of Danish bacon? A: Behind a glass of water.

No, this won’t do. There are some things in life you have to take seriously. And the Danish Marmite ban is one of them.

Maybe it won’t actually lead to war, but it will certainly lead to a roaring trade in food parcels to our beleagured ex-pat friends and relations.

And it won’t just be Marmite in the parcels. Horlicks, Ovaltine and Farley’s Rusks have all fallen under the wrath of the Dane. As has the Vegemite, the antipodean version of our national spread. Never tried it, personally, but some folk swear by it. ("Bloody Vegemite," they say.)

It’s easy to see the roots of the ban in a massive and hitherto well-hidden international conspiracy. Prince Philip, of course, is closely related to the Danish royal family, and it’s a well-known fact that he doesn’t like Marmite (subs please check). Plus Iceland used to be part of Denmark, and they’re chucking another shedload of volcanic ash in our general direction. So it must be true. The Danes are out to get us.

 But as with all good conspiracies, and to quote one well-known Dane: “The rest is silence.”