It just had to happen. Aldi is selling Himalayan salt. People are queuing up and a special isle (nr3) has been set-up to cope with the demand. No one wants to be seen serving food at their Christmas turkey laden tables without this special pink salt. Just imagine the ignominy of it? It started in the US; where else? Since then it has taken a foothold in Europe. I have been told the salt has, since last week, spread to Latvia, Lithuania and even Estonia. Pink salt waves are swamping the world.

This salt has magic healing properties. A lame man was seen rising from his bed after just a single sprinkle of this magic salt on his eggs, sunny side up, after years of living horizontally. Special trace elements are imbued in this salt. Cooks now swear by it and no restaurant worth their salt would dare to serve food without this Himalayan salt, mined in Pakistan. Corns, sciatica, vertigo and nervous dispositions are all curable. No parliament subject to limp indecisions can afford not to have those pink salt containers on their front benches. As soon as a hiatus is reached, the opposition will just walk over to an obstinate senator, and sprinkle some magic salt.

Of course, this iron oxide laden pink salt has to be combined with serving food on wooden slabs. No one seems to know exactly if the wooden food platters came first or if the magic pink salt can lay claim to that distinction. We had our first experience with the food on a wooden slate in a Bowral pub well over a year ago. I though it was a mistake and that a carpenter was perhaps helping out with timber off-cuts.  Perhaps the pub’s ceramic plates were in the dishwasher, who knows? It was well before the pink salt period.

It was difficult to eat from this wooden platter. It’s shape had a protruding handle to hold a grip on when the buzzer announced the T-bone was ready to be picked up from the counter. As I like my meat rare, it took careful balancing not to dribble the juice over other diners while walking with it back to our table. Once seated, I built a little dyke around my T-bone steak with the clever use of arranging the chips tuck-pointed with the tomatoes. It stemmed the flow. Helvi did not have any things flooding over, as she had ordered a pizza, the Napoli special.

Since then the Himalayan salt containers and wooden serving platters are now everywhere. No restaurant use normal salt or silly ceramic plates. The diners nod knowingly to each other and we are all  now so terribly ‘in’. We joined the real world and nothing scares us now.

In between all this chaos in salt and wooden platters there is the Himalayan salt rock lamps making inroads in our interiors. Positive ions emitted from those lamps cure those suffering from the more mental afflictions together with those with dark or grey marital unevenness. The person suffering from clear-sighted despair, the hopelessly addicted to moodiness and heavy thoughts are best advised to turn those lights on next to the book case or even the TV.

Not even Isis will make an inroad. We just sprinkle them with special salt, turn on the salt rock lamp and hurl wooden boards at them. That will teach them a lesson.

We have won.