My sainted wife gave me an early Christmas present!

For all that I enjoy living in Britain, there are a few national peculiarities that continue to puzzle me. A case in point is the Cheerios Affair. Any reputable grocery store will stock a number of bizarre offshoots of the Cheerios clan – honey/almond, multi-grain, “chocolatey”, basil/chipotle (OK, I made that last one up), but the humble simple unsweetened toasty perfection of the original 100% oat Cheerio is nowhere to be found.

This is not merely an academic observation – my standard breakfast for going on 40 years has been a bowl of Cheerios. The chaos that might befall if I had to eat some other kind of cereal is too terrible to contemplate.

We do have the option of driving for about two hours to the nearest American PX, which also stocks other essentials of life unknown to the Brits: Miracle Whip, Texas Pete’s hot sauce and crunchy peanut butter in tubs larger than a teacup, but with fuel running at £1.20/litre this is an expensive proposition.

It’s probably a sign of age that we didn’t immediately work out the obvious solution. Of course you can Google Cheerios and of course you can have them delivered to your door. And this being Britain, of course they will show up the day after you order them. (That’s the standard delay for mail delivery). And just in time too – I was down to my last box.

Civilization as we know it is once again saved by the power of the world-wide web! Perhaps I’ll send a box of O’s to Sir Tim Berners-Lee as a reward. 🙂