These WERE a few of my favourite things

One of my (many) pet peeves is the disappearance of things from supermarket shelves. It’s bad enough that things are relocated from time to time (which at least means you may be able to find them again after redrawing your map of the supermarket), or that they change their packaging (which means that they are still there, but no longer look familiar), but it’s when they vanish completely and without trace … and with no recourse to effective lamentation or protest apart from a short anguished howl in the aisles: “Oh, no, they’ve stopped stocking <insert name of discontinued line>”.

So, in recent weeks, the following items have ceased to exist

• my preferred hair gel (it had just the right degree of tackiness (“tacky” in the “sticky” sense, as opposed to the “bad taste” sense … although that was probably true as well!))
• my preferred breakfast cereal (well, half of my preferred breakfast cereal, since I have — well, had — a patented mix of two particular cereals)
• packet cheesecake mix in Trangia-sized quantities (I nearly thought the packet cheesecakes had disappeared entirely, but the company still makes a ginormous box, which makes way too much for 8 of us on a hike so we have to estimate 2/3 of it)
• packets of Tang (in fact, even Tang in general seems to have gone, which is a shame because it was a good drink flavouring on hikes)
• TVP (actually this probably disappeared years ago, but I was going to experiment with this on a hike and decided that my 10 year old packet was probably a bit past its use by date … and in case you’re wondering, TVP is “textured vegetable protein” which is a sort of dehydrated vegetable product that behaves like minced meat)

What’s really weird in the grand scheme of supermarket shopping is that Colgate has about 20 different varieties of toothpaste. It’s as if they never discontinued any of them! Are there really 20 different varieties of teeth? Go on, have a look at the toothpaste aisle when you’re supermarketing next: it is seriously freaky.

Give me a “serves 8” packet cheesecake mix any day … oh, and my hair gel.