IT MUST be a complete nightmare inviting into your home one of the growing number of cheesecloth-wearing harpies who appear rolex replica to rule the roost in the growing number of "transitional communities" which now pepper the Westcountry. She would pass a more than shrewish eye over the political incorrectness of the fox masks on the wall, comment on the unsuitability of the literature on the bookshelves and, not least, condemn the sheer thoughtlessness of the refreshments that are on offer.
Being the perfect host you would whip up a quick snack for the woman - who would be accompanied, probably, by a horde of children called things like Zac or China - only to find everything refused as the coffee, oddly, contains caffeine, the milk comes from a cow rather than a soya bean, and the Dundee cake is riddled with sugar, nuts and lashings of gluten.
All her family, she would explain, had a food intolerance to the above items.
Dairy products, say, would prompt learning difficulties in little China, and to put Zac anywhere near a roasted almond would be akin to shoving arsenic down his throat.
Pausing only to consider how many of those poor souls currently scrambling over rubble in Haiti for their next bite have food allergies compared to the well-heeled "worried well" who live in the South Hams, the solution would be to show her and her brood the door and then turn to a study from Portsmouth University that shows that you are not quite the cynic she might think.
Apparently one in five of us claim to have some form of food intolerance - a fourfold increase in just 20 years - and researchers at the university wanted to find out why this should be. All those evil, money-grabbing farmers poisoning us with GM and the like, no doubt.
But when they came to testing those convinced of their allergies, fewer than 2 per cent were found to actually suffer.
That tiny proportion obviously have great difficulties in life, but the remaining 98 per cent were clearly suffering in the mind rather than in their stomachs.
Millions, it seems, have imposed a form of dietary puritanism on themselves.
Unless that's made compulsory replica rolex it offers no worries to hedonists like 'When they tested those convinced of allergies, fewer myself - but hidden in there is something that should scare us all. It is the frequent use of the word "intolerant". than 2 per cent were found to actually suffer' Denying oneself a chocolate bar or a swipe of butter on your bread is one thing, but it broadens frighteningly into intolerance of just about every aspect of our lives.
Smoking, owning a four-wheel drive vehicle, taking a holiday that involves boarding a plane rather than cycling the Camel Trail, using a good, old fashioned light bulb - none of these things can be tolerated and must be punished.
Food intolerance seems almost benign, as it usually boils down to being denied free peanuts on the bar down the pub on Sunday lunchtimes in case someone keels over.
But the bigotry really starts to hurt when that punishment takes the form of taxation.
Intolerance of global damage means a hefty tax on aviation fuel and that humble Land Rover; intolerance of the joy of fags means that 20 Piccadilly cost the best part of seven quid, and soon there'll be a "fat tax" on anything that's worth eating.
embroidered patches
The time is not far off when we are all forced
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