There was a time when it was all over the shelves. Stacks of the stuff. In the baking aisle. In the beverages aisle. Even in the aisle with all the condiments you slap on toast. Irene’s Granny Taylor swore by Lyle’s. Look at the colour of it, Ire, she’d say to Irene. The way it slides off the spoon like golden oil. Almost a miracle the way it does that.
Back in the early 2020s, Irene’s granny was big on her syrup and her Gold Blend instant coffee. A full teaspoon of each and a thirty second stir. Waste not want not, she’d say, touching the hot spoon to her lips. Waste not want not. Or at least that’s what Irene assumed she was saying what with Granny Taylor’s lack of teeth. There was just the one tooth at the upper front, bang in the middle. Irene’s grandad said that was simply for show so that no one would call Catherine Mavis, his wife of fifty-nine years, a toothless whatever.
So there was a time when it was all over the shelves. And then there was a time that it wasn’t. That time didn’t happen overnight. It wasn’t like a Border Control Raid, or an Armed Smash and Grab, or a Hostile Hedge Fund Takeover. And The People, they didn’t notice at first. Not all of them anyway. Not The People that drove to the hypermarkets in their souped-up vehicles larger than the average housing association flat (what was left of them – certainly less of them than the souped-up vehicles). Not The People who got their groceries delivered by thin sweating men in ragged sweatshirts and worn jeans with eyes that darted from their phones to the hands that didn’t tip and back to their phones again. Not The People who’d had the wisdom, the inside track, the foresight, and surplus cash to stock up on Absolutely Everything after Brexit or the Great Fire or the Great Flood or the Great Plague or the Great Inflation.
There were a few passing comments.
Didn’t you order two tins, Babs, you know I always like to have an extra just in case? Aye James, of course I did but they’re after saying we could only have the one.
You forgot the syrup, Harry. I need that syrup for the cricket tray bake on Saturday. If I’ve told you once I’ve told you a thousand times. Sorry love, it wasn’t in its usual place. And I was worried about the car. You heard about Alan’s Toyota? They won’t give him insurance now. Only if he doesn’t leave home.
And then there were a couple of months when Tommy’s favoured great value supermarket own brand wasn’t there and Irene had to choose a more expensive one and she didn’t dare tell Robbie for fear that he’d put a fist in her face again which he’d come to do with the frequency of what used to be a one in a hundred year storm event but were now pretty much every week.
And it wasn’t just the consumers. Wee Annie down the Supply Chain with her disabled lad Eric and the sudden loss of her job in the canning factory threatening to put them out in the street. Adam in Logistics in the Shipping Yard about to propose to Arlene, three months pregnant what with condoms no longer available in the village or even online, standing in front of Jealous Jesus Jewellery when his phone pinged. Don’t turn up tomorrow, lad, there’s nowt to do they’ve let us all go. And the Sun kicking up hell on its front pages SYRUP SHORTAGE SLAPS SECRETARY OF STATE FOR CAKE ON THE MAKE
Or words to that effect.
What about the dentists? Surely they’d love a syrup shortage what with their vows to save the nation’s teeth plastered over every bus, every bridge and every flying car hangar. Not so fast. This is 2032 and the Dental Robots (just call me Dr Blatnoyd) are only in it for the chip and pin and frankly the more syrup The Proles eat the more ping ping the apps peel out in the tax havens for the Syrup Barons who horde and sell horde and sell, keeping The Proles sweet and anxious sweet and anxious in an ever decreasing cycle of gloom.
Back to Irene. Irene has been to three supermarkets and two corner shops, had a scroll through ebay, Amazon and Stores4Us. She’s been on the dark web, to the black market and down the alley behind the vegan fish and chip shop. She’s called friends and neighbours and Women’s Refuge and pleaded and cajoled and wept and genuflected. She’s kneeled for Jesus and offered her bare breasts to the devil. She’s scrubbed her mouth with carbolic and slashed at the chip in her wrist with an old razor and the sweet ruby droplets of blood have left a bright red crumb trail across the bathroom floor.
Robbie’s on the night shift and it’s syrup on toast at six pm sharp or it’s a hard slap across her right ear and a shove backwards into the kitchen sink and a shaking fist thick into her privates. It’s four in the afternoon and Irene is on the floor, leaning against the kitchen cabinet, the empty syrup tin tight between her clenched knees. It’s not easy to finish a tin of syrup, not easy at all, but Irene learnt a lot from Granny Taylor back in the day and she’s staved off Tommy’s fist for three days longer than anyone else might have thought possible.
Why doesn’t Irene leave Robbie, you say from the comfort of your velvet armchair and a view over the lapping floodplain that was once a burn full of eels and kids with short yellow wellies and is now a lake where you occasionally sail but mostly just point out to your guests that trudge out from the city and gasp and sweat from the hundred step climb up from the carports. Why doesn’t she just run?
Where would she go? Haven’t you understood that when the syrup market goes tits up so does everything else? Syrup shortage ramifications ripple far and wide. They ooze sticky sadness and form glugs of austerity and they sour the relationship between The Proles and The State if there ever was one to sour, and they pit rogue landlord against shivering tenant, and they drop mortgaged to the hilt houses into sink holes, and they push crumbling cliffs onto beachside cafes, and they play havoc with satellites and communication systems and so no one can answer the phone at Women’s Refuge because it doesn’t ring it doesn’t ring it doesn’t ring.
I plan to work this idea into a longer piece.
SANDERLINGS 