A world we might know together

It is never not surprising how common we are across the world. I have a friend in Portugal and we have pop cultural agreements on most things. Yes to sonic youth and that era of music in the 90s, no to Jared Leto for all the reasons we should say no.

But it is astounding that living literally at the antipodes, except for the fact he’s Portuguese and I’m really not, you might mistake us for twins - Like Danny Devito and Arnold Schwarzenegger type of twins.

And travelling the western world, across huge swathes of land from highest points to lowest, at the end of the day, regardless of language, there is a deep and abiding commonality.

So this is why what I’m going to say now, has been so distressing. When I say ‘common’ I don’t mean bereft of the cultural richness that informs each of us differently in how we might eat or dress or dance to 80s disco. But common in that there is a fundamental beat that drives us.

So, why in gods name, why for all that is holy are salt and vinegar chips in green packaging throughout Europe?

I have grown up keen to spot that pink packaging at parties or in the cupboard of a friend who had a mum who bought those kinda of treats. I can’t tell you the rage I felt when pringles moved the dial and violently disregarded the unspoken rule of colour coded packaging and delivered to unsuspecting Australians blue packaging for salt n vinegar chips in 1992.

In 1992, we were easily wooed in the suburbs of Melbourne. I was on a steady diet of caramello chocolate and salt n vinegar chips, and had made my run to 7/11 efficient by clocking the golden yellow packaging of the caramello and the pink packaging of salt n vinegar thins. Then, suddenly, people broke rank and took on, without complaint this egregious violation and got sucked into this round tin frenzy. I was appalled. Salt n vinegar is not blue, plain chips are EVERYONE KNOWS THAT. Then chips themselves started pumping their ride.

How did we let it go as far as it has? Why didn’t we think through how limited our colour range is, compared to the amount of dumb-dumb chip varieties. Even today, when I see a sour cream and chives, my heart skips a little beat - because I think I’m looking at my good ol s n ‘ v. 

And all this corruption of our chip universe has had flow on effects. I was ‘hanging’ with a young friend the other day at a northern English fish n chippie. The delightful woman, who spoke her own version of English, demanded we have salt and vinegar on our hot chips. I of course, felt as if I had returned home but the youngen looked at me and mouthed salt AND vinegar? What could I say to her? How could I comfort her in the knowledge she had been born into a world of non conforming chip packet colours, that now rarely has time for the humility of salt and vinegar. Who has ever craved honey soy chicken? Dill pickle and

What happened to the world of Pac-Man and chicken chips in a green bag? Cheese twisties in orange and the craziest thing that happened in the 80s, barbecue chips that came in orange. This world made sense, it held me as I went to sleep wondering if Reagan would hit the button.

What do our kids have these days in this mad mad world where everything seems out of control?? An abundance of chaos, expressed through our obsession with inventing unnecessary chip flavours and then needing to violate a once treasure colour code that held us close?

I have a solution for the disruptions that happen at those macro geo political levels - make our fucking chips uniform, agree upon a language and see in each other the same human that simply hungers for  a thin slice of potato with a perfect balance of salt n vinegar. Thats the world I want to believe might still be in reach.