Tragic confessions of an eccentric marmalade man

Double Vision with Charlie Adley

I have a confession to make. Last week in this colyoom I was fluffing my feathers and strutting my liberal stuff all Right On Man and Hey Dude style about how material goods meant nothing to me; how all I needed was time, peace and meadowsweet.

Meanwhile, behind the scenes, this sanctimonious scribbler was going to unusual lengths and a fair bit of trouble to order an entire case of material goods, in the shape of marmalade.

Yep, you read that right. The orangey spread you put on your toast. Not a very important ingredient in the recipe of life you might well think, and I’d fully agree. Sometimes my behaviour surprises me too, not always in a good way.

For years I bought the Chivers Olde English, and when that disappeared from the shelves I switched to Marks and Sparks’ equivalent, until they changed their recipe, turning a supposed spread into a solid glutinous lump.

Scanning the supermarket shelves I spotted a dark thick cut marmalade made by a County Cork company called Folláin, which was splendid.

Just as you might now be wondering how long you can sustain any interest in my marmaladey prattlings, I had never wasted a moment of my valuable time thinking about the stuff.

Why would I, in a lifetime that offers love and disease, war and joy and football?

I hadn’t and didn’t, right up to the time when the supermarkets stopped stocking Folláin’s dark thick cut.

Only old fogeys such as your scribbler like bitter marmalade with chunky peel. In the world of marmalade (I know, that sounds so sad) the trend is most definitely towards a sweet pale peel-free gunk.

I tried others brands and found them sadly lacking, which is the point at which a man of healthy mind would settle either for the least disgusting brand or just let the whole thing go.

Yet for some reason I didn’t. Despite lists a metre long of genuinely important things I must do, I found myself studying the label of my last bottle of Folláin, looking for contact information.

At the same time as I checked the label, a niggling worry ran around my brain box. My behaviour was becoming a mite odd. Had I now officially left behind the realms of ‘Quirky’ and strayed into the great plains of ‘Eccentricity’?

Doubtless many of you who know me will take great pleasure in reassuring me that I left eccentricity behind ages ago and have lived long in the land of ‘Weirdo.’

Most people seem to believe that being eccentric sounds fun, but as it turns out, eccentricity is a very subjective matter.

Writers of period drama portray the classic English eccentric as a happy human cocktail of haphazard disorder and benevolence, but my experience of the type was very different, burned into my being at Prep School.

For more, read this week’s Galway City Tribune.