My mate Marmite

I'm a Marmite kid. I just love the black, salty mass. Fresh bread, a coating of hard butter. A layering of Marmite. What more could a man ask for? Their advertising campaign was, for a long time (is it still?) based on 'Love it or hate it'. Fantastic. Still true today. To watch a naive Canadian tuck in to a spot of the Black Nectar still provides much amusement - their face screws up and expletives usually follow. Fine by me.


But recently I asked my good friend Hugh, who himself likes a thin layering of Marmite, to send out the last of our household belongings from the UK he has been harbouring for the last four years. Last week three boxes duly arrived (their journey and retrieval is a story in itself I might one day relate) containing millions of polystyrene balls, a few treasures and low and behold, a crate full of Marmite. But how much is too much? Is that possible? As a kid, my mum bought a huge tin of it which we used to fill up the old glass jars. Amusingly, the Marmite jars are the same shape as they have always been thanks to the public backlash when they tried to introduce a cheaper straight jar (looked to much like the inferior Oz version, Vegemite). This tin, I remember, was just caked with dried Marmite and to this day I have been on the search for some similar bulk buy.

Let me introduce Ziggy. She owns a way-out Print Shack in Chesterfield, UK. 'You say it, I'll print it' she says. Test her at your peril. Now Hugh and Ziggy are good friends, but she is a bad influence on Hugh who is gullible (a rather amusing accusation leveled at him one day). Anyway, suffice to say that, thanks to the generosity and madness of them both I am now the proud owner of the equivalent of one massive tin of Marmite. 6kg of it. Thats one thick spread. Heaven. Or is it Hell? Thanks guys.