The grimmest assessment of the world economic meltdown that I have seen came not from a banker or a politician or a pundit, but from Kristian, a 53-year-old Icelandic fisherman quoted in the Times. ‘The priorities went askew,’ he sighed. ‘We thought we could have jam on our bread every day of the week.’
God. Think about that. Couldn’t the pathos of it just make you weep? Not even toast, you’ll notice. Bread. Toast is a stuff of which the Icelandic fisherman has yet to dream. Had the glacial streams run sluggish with diamonds, had the cod grown golden teeth and scales of silver, ah yes, that would have been a time for toast. In a mere unprecedented economic boom, bread was luxury enough. Bread with jam.
I don’t mean to go on about this, but I had a hunch that Icelandic jam probably wasn’t one of the premier jams around.
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