The Cranberry Disappearance

Particularly stalkerish readers will have heard me talk about Cranberry, a store at some of London’s tube and train stations where I have a habit of grabbing some fruit and nuts on the UberCommute as a kind of healthy-ish protein shot to add a certain nutritional value to days that would otherwise comprise principally of coffee. There’s a thread here – I used to have Graze boxes delivered, which were tiny shots of the same kind of thing. d has frequently made me jars of a fruit and nut mix as a healthy-ish snack. And Cranberry had become something I looked forward to about the UberCommute. Having had a month off them, I swung around the usual corner at Paddington this morning, only to find the shop shut up and a notice on it saying it had been repossessed. Have had a madly busy day, but actually found a minute to call up their head office, to see if they still existed as a company. Yes, it turned out they did…but only just. From having about nine stores, they now had a single stall left, in Hammersmith.

It will show you something probably quite deep and meaningful about the nature of addictive behaviour if I tell you that after work, I got a bus from Kensington to Earl’s Court, just to visit the stall. And then I got a tube from Hammersmith to Paddington. I went miles out of my way, just for a couple of handfuls of fruit and nuts.

That’s got to be wrong, surely?

So I’ve made a decision. I’m choosing to interpret it as a sign – even though I’m a rationalist who doesn’t believe in signs – that the Paddington store has closed. That’s me done with Cranberry. Phase done, time over with. Back to simply Coffee Mondays when I do the UberCommute.

Hey – protein’s over-rated, right?

Tomorrow should be interesting – I’m going for Cyber-conversion to do a 24 hour walking ECG. d, bless her, is still lurgied, and is apparently banging into walls and doors when she stumbles around the flat. So, walking ECG, shedloads of work, and trying to get my girl all better – she went to the docs today and apparently it takes around two weeks to throw off this bug. Poor thing.