A job application included a question asking me what I find fascinating...
This is what I, in my infinite 6am wisdom, wrote.
At this very precise moment in time (ie. the last couple of days), I am fascinated by prawn cocktail Pringles. Here's why: they are an entirely repulsive proposition, and yet I am drawn to them in a potent and inescapable way. This is a dynamic that is appalling and compelling in equal measure; so red, and so flaggy, that I can already imagine my therapist doing that thing where she just looks down at her hands for a full minute and even though she says she’s not counting to 10 slowly, I can tell she is counting to 10 slowly. You know?
[Note to self: buy therapist a Christmas panettone, in the manner of an Italian parent seeking to provide their first-generation children with just the right amount of embarrassment and alienation from their peers by gifting a conspicuous dome of sweet bread to teachers, tutors, and so on.]
Anyway. The tanginess of the prawn cocktail flavour — which in itself is a troubling concept — has no place intermingled with the raw, earthy umaminess of the Pringle format. That’s just a fact. And of what its intersection with the most readily identifiable aspect of Pringle mouth feel, AKA palette shredding? This characteristic, though apparent across all varietals and terroirs, somehow manifests exponentially when found in tandem with the piquancy of a crustaceal parfum.
And yet.
This is a pairing that is incredibly, incongruously, and undeniably moreish. Maybe it's the juxtaposition. Maybe it's the wall of flavour enhancer 621. Or maybe it's the fact that 2020 has been such a gut punch year, we don't have to know right from wrong anymore (maybe it doesn't even matter) — we just have to continue.
Whatever the reason, when I look at a prawn cocktail Pringle, I see humanity in all its beautiful and flawed glory, and am humbled by its capacity to endure and prevail.
To pop, and yea, never to stop.
