The Headlines Read ‘Global Current Shortage’
…but is it actually a revolution?
This news reporting style piece of writing was in response to a creative writing challenge held in our writing group with the reference ‘Still Life’, and a (very random) discussion that we had one meeting about how there was a shortage of currants, the love of dried fruit by a number of members of the group and my absolute distaste for it.
It was compounded by Alpen’s marketing comms statement that their cereal now contained 30% extra fruit.
In a parallel time: is there a shortage, or could there be another reason…?
Farmers blame the weather, economists blame global markets, bakers and consumers of dried fruit everywhere are clutching their hot cross buns in despair.
But the truth, dear reader, is far stranger.
It’s not the climate. It’s not the cost of farming. It’s the currants themselves. In fact, generations of predecessors.
Yes, after centuries of silent suffering, the grapes and berries of the world have finally risen up.
In vineyards, gardens and greenhouses across the globe, vines rustle under moonlight, not with wind but with whispered plotting. Grapes huddled together, muttering about “the rising raisin problem.”
Blackcurrants passing leaflets under cover of foliage: “We deserve better. No more dehydration for human consumption.”
One particularly furious sultana (once a plump, carefree grape before her tragic shrivelling) has become the figurehead of this revolution. Known only as ‘Wrinkly Mary’, she paces picket lines at dawn, shouting slogans through a megaphone made of a vine stem.
Their demands? Simple.
- An end to the barbaric practice of sun-drying.
- Dignity for berries everywhere.
- The right to stay juicy, fresh, and full-bodied, as they were created.
Of course, not all fruits are on board. Some berries are split, half wanting liberation, the other half committed to the ‘life ever after’, serving their human carers and submitting to their fatal destiny with the promise of becoming something better. The raisins, meanwhile, are so traumatised at their forced transformation, they’ve formed a support group called ‘Shrivelled But Strong’.
And where does this leave us humans? In many instances, divided. Some mourn their fruitcake traditions, a handful of the dehydrated fruits. Others (like me) secretly celebrate, delighting in the thought of never having to dodge the shrivelled pellets in an otherwise perfectly good scone (and the back tracking of marketing messages promoting the practice of drying and persecution of these products that nature has born; Alpen I hope you’re reading this).
So next time you read a headline about a “shortage,” look closer. It may not be economics or climate at all. It may just be the quiet but determined revolution of fruit who’ve had enough of being shrunk, wrung out, and baked into oblivion.
Long live the Grape; delicious without being messed with or forcibly tortured!