"Passion is relative," he said boringly. Not a classic start to an article, admittedly, but hopefully a solid subject for debate.
Take Paul and Helen: Paul's passionate about his stamp collection. Helen's stranded in the Sahara desert and is passionate about finding water. If you put them in a room with each other and told them the other's passions, they'd laugh at each other, then perhaps settle their differences over a drink (water most likely, eh Helen?! Haha. Not but seriously she is very thirsty), become friends, and then perhaps Darren would ask her to marry him. Helen would reject him, though. Why? Because Helen's also passionate about not being written into this blog as some sort of objectified piece of meat.
I'd like to defend my lack of passion, or rather, lack of universal passion. There are things we should probably all be passionate about: fracking, Israel and Palestine, the way your thumb accidentally grazes the voice memo button when you text despite your insistence on never deliberately sending one. However, I come from a very small village, where these sorts of concerns didn't plague us every day. It's called Hurstpierpoint, and it's fine if you haven't heard of it; I'm from there and I had to spellcheck it. The most famous person there is former Olympic athlete Frank Salvat and he hasn't been alive for three years. In Hurstpierpoint, you can live your whole life there under a rock, and ignore the major issues of the day with nary a care in the world. This isn't a complaint at all; I'm grateful I've never had to feel passionate about anything important. I see passion as a spectrum bookended by exoticism and gritty determination. Passion's something I associate with the Jarrow Marchers, and Antonio Banderas.
My attempts to be passionate may pale in comparison, falling upon deaf ears, and lifeless limbs, but I'd kick myself into goshdarned oblivion if I didn't muster up the courage and ruddy well speak up. Yes, my attempts may be considered of lesser importance than what you hold most dear, but I have a right to put it out there that my passions exist. So here, for the first time on webpaper, is something I'm passionately angry about.
To give it some context, with nothing much to do in Hurstpierpoint, I ended up joining a book club (it was run by a woman called Paige, which no-one else thought was insane). One text we studied got me thinking, and I don't normally talk about serious matters, but something about it bothered me for years and I need to get it off my chest. I get angry and upset when I think about it, and am doing so again as I type this. Here goes:
I can't understand (and I don't think I ever will) why - just WHY - anyone would ever buy Bertie Bott's Every Flavour Beans. There. I said it. I don't hear any of you speaking up about this. The health risks so greatly outweigh the potential benefits, to the extent that the company's very existence is baffling. Firstly, the product's name promises the beans could be any (and I mean ANY) flavour. Crucially, everything in the world has a flavour. Most things are not delicious food. Just think about that for a moment, because I really can't stress it enough: the VAST majority of flavours in the world aren't delicious. Around Hurstpierpoint I'd walk, placing my tongue upon various flora and fauna, flotsam and jetsam, crying aloud "Does this have a flavour, Bertie? Does it?!" Even if you got something edible as a flavour, the chances of it being actual food are hilariously small. You'd most likely get a root vegetable, or ingredients in their most basic form, like pure sodium, or dextrin, or whatever the hell goes into ready meals.
Startlingly, Dumbledore knocks one back in the first Harry Potter novel, which turns out to be 'earwax', thus revealing human material is included in Mr Bott's undeniably wacky flavours. Essentially you're just as likely to get curry as you are to get stomach acid and dick. I feel like sometimes the witches and wizards in Harry Potter just use magic for the sake of it. It's so much easier to just buy normal food.
In conclusion, it's so stupid.
So there. It's something I feel passionate about, and even if it's not something you'd felt passionate about prior to reading, I hope it's sparked debate amongst your friends, torn your family apart, kept you awake at night wondering why. If it hasn't, then maybe you can take enjoyment from the fact that whoever uploaded this blog on the Huffington Post had to find a relevant stock image to put at the top. I can't wait to see what it is.
Glenn Moore - Glengarry Glen Glenn will be at the Just The Tonic, The Caves at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival for the month of August. For tickets go to www.edfringe.com