It’s a marmite issue.

Brexit. Football. Strictly Come Prancing. Coronation Street. And marmite.

Things that people love or hate. Yes or no. On or off. There’s no middle ground, there’s no ‘grey’, its totally divisive. And nothing more so than marmite, hence it wins the rights to claim metaphorical status for all things in that class. People either love it or absolutely hate it. Very few are ambivalent (Jeremy Corbyn thinks it should be on the table, in case some workers may like it on their white, working-class bread, but he’d rather not commit personally to either having it removed nor having a vote as to whether it should be removed from the table).

I love Marmite. Always have done. Don’t eat it much but I still love that amazing, salty ‘hit’ you get when tasted.

And now they’ve gone and mixed it with peanut butter. Holy shit.

Now peanut butter I do consume. In vast quantities. I’ll eat it on toast, bread, crackers, bananas, or just off the spoon in times of real ‘need’. Because I love peanuts (never mind the ‘mammalian eye’, if anti-evolutionists want the pinnacle of God’s creationism, it must surely be the humble yet totally perfect peanut) and when mixed with the best ingredients the world has ever produced; sugar and salt, and mushed up with oil, there is just nothing better.

But mixing it with marmite? Eeeeuuuwwww, surely not? I mean; really???

Yeah, that’s what I thought. I winced at the very concept. Turned my nose up at the offence to my purist’s perspective. I internally gagged at the idea of mixing two wonderful things which just simply ‘don’t go together’. It’s like making a donner kebab with bread-and-butter pudding with custard. Two wonderful things, the total of which is way less than the sum of its parts.

But then I tried marmite peanut butter. Gingerly. Tentatively. Carefully. As if it might bite ME. And, ever prepared to rush to the sink and spit it out/vomit…

It was wonderful. Fabulous. Sensational. Incredible. Life-changing. Life affirming! And I love it. (Note to Rachie: ‘get yer own jar to take back to Berlin, this one’s mine/gone’).

But I’m not writing this about the food. I’m writing because people who love marmite and peanut butter are going to be totally divided on this new mix. But it can’t be a ‘marmite issue’ because its about marmite. People are going to really love it or really hate it (nut allergists probably best not enter this debate). So do we re-work the metaphor as being a ‘marmite peanut-butter’ issue? or just ignore it? Or come up with a new metaphor for things that divide people because they either really love it or really hate it? A ‘Corbyn’ issue. No, no-one loves him, not even his own party. A Trump issue? Similar problem. An Arsenal issue? An Extinction Rebellion issue?

See, you solve one problem and you get another in its place.

Happy Thursday

A xxxx