Lollies

I haven't eaten a mars bar in years, not a full-size one anyway. There's something not quite right about trying to eat a piece of confectionary that represents about half your daily energy requirements. People give these to children and wonder why "little Darryl is such a handful". Mars bars are an adult dose of sugar. Giving one to a child is tantamount to attempted poisoning*.

Mars bars have been removed from the shelves in New South Wales since early July and have only just made it back in to the shops this week. This was triggered by an extortion racket that seems to be very shady and very short on detail. The strangest part of it is that Masterfoods, who make the mars bar, have been putting a senior member of staff on TV with updates. This tubby bespectacled man has the charisma of a more boring than average theologian. He looks like he could use a little sugar injection to get him through the day and will be very glad when this issue is put to bed and he can work, rest and play as normal.

To celebrate the return of the Mars bar - its' absence was clearly an issue for the women in the office - a family pack of "fun size"** mars bars was handed out. Australian chocolate has more preservatives in it compared to European chocolate and is tempered very differently to deal with the heat. The result is that Mars and Snickers bars taste even less like chocolate than I'd expected. Thank heaven the liquorice here is pretty good and much more prevalent than in the UK. I shall, in addition to switching my default filthy food from pastie to pie, be changing my default confectionary back to liquorice.

Personally I couldn't care less about Mars bars, and I had already heard from other poms that the chocolate here was shite. What I hadn't expected is that the Aussies call sweets "Lollies". This is just plain backward and the bread-stealing recedivists need to be corrected. A lolly is a type of sweet and entirely unrepresentative of sweets as a whole. Even Americans haven't debased sweets so badly. The word "candy", whilst not necessarily accurate is at least descriptive. Lollies?! Horrid.

Oh well I guess it's the little differences that make Australian culture*** different.

*For those wishing to cause trouble giving a child a can of Coke to wash their full size Mars bar down with is an ideal way to send them absolutely sky high. In additon to the caffeine Coke contains another 17 teaspoons of sugar. I recommend dosing the child approximately 10 minutes before their parents come and collect them, the child's blood sugar levels will reach their peak around ten minutes after collection. You will never have to babysit again.

**Tolerably small

***[insert yoghurt joke here]