meat free

Karoline (with a K)’s rather sheepish announcement that P&F is actually deeply in the red, rather than trading profitably as she reported just a week ago, comes as a bit of a Monday morning shock. Apparently the accountant told her on Friday that just adding up the amount she thought clients should be paying us doesn’t count as actual income. This rather optimistic approach and the fact that she hasn’t logged a supplier invoice for six months painted rather too bright a trading picture. She was going to suspend four senior people as a result, but we haven’t got four senior people.

Adding to life’s uncertainties, the Daily Mail tells us that eating saturated fat could be good for you, and Paul McCartney has released a song advocating meat-free Mondays. The sensible default position is to do the opposite of whatever the Mail and Macca advise, so I’ll be eating a lot of animal products next Monday and going satfat-free for the rest of the week. (The video’s worth watching though, if only for the shot of Joanna Lumley as Pauly sings “Think of too much livestock.”)

Anyway, you can take being sensible too far. AG Barr has realised this and decided to take on the distribution of Snapple, the brand that time forgot. “It will feel at home next to Tizer,” barks K caustically, but the reference is lost on most of us. Who or what is Tizer? K explains: “Horrible fizzy drink, sold in brown glass quart bottles with Bakelite caps.” This sounds unlikely, but she persists: “Production is deliberately limited - like Heston’s Waitrose range - to create spurious PR interest or ‘consumer demand’ as we call it.” Unlike our finances, all is clear.