This week’s post isn’t about books. It’s not about the state of the world. Today I need to talk about something much more personal, more intimate. I need to talk about the break-up of a relationship that’s been with me for a very long time, for a decade and then some. A relationship that was once filled with love, but which, if I am honest, has become tired and drab and has lived off  its memories for years. Something I need to get out of my system.

So.

Dear Ben and Jerry

We’ve been together such a long time. that it’s hard to believe there was a time before we met. I remember it, though. I was a single guy who liked to sit down on an evening from time to time and watch some TV, or maybe a movie with a little company. I wasn’t picky about that. A bag of cheesy nachos one week, maybe some salted cashew nuts the next, or maybe a small trifle. I guess I wasn’t the sort for a long-term commitment, or at least that’s what I thought. I played the field. And then I met you. I’ll never forget the flavour your wore for our first evening together. ‘Chocolate Fudge Brownie’, I think it was, but that was mere foreplay. With ‘Pulp Addiction’, you seduced me deep into your creamy folds. With ‘From Russia With Buzz’, we should have been together forever.

But then you changed. For a while, I thought you’d left me, but then you came back, dazzling and renewed. With ‘Dublin Mudslide’, and my tongue yearned for nothing else. I thought we were the perfect couple. All those evenings we sat together on the sofa. And yes, there were children, and they took their toll, but they would have loved you too, in time. In fact, I’m pretty damn sure they would have loved you too. Let’s face it, they’re not exactly picky.

You haven’t had those flavours for me for a long time now. Sure, you came up with some others. ‘One Sweet Whirled’, ‘Bohemian Raspberry’, but they weren’t the same. It hasn’t been the same for a long time. Who are we kidding? We’ve moved apart, so far apart that you’re not even the first thing I look for in the freezer aisle any more.

You don’t excite me any more. Maybe it’s me that’s changed, but I’m fairly sure it’s you. The list of ingredients pretty much gives you away there. I don’t suppose you even care now, but it’s over between us. I have to move on. I have a new sofa-desert in my life now.

Goodbye.