Storm Bert and Cucumbers
To the Editor,
I write to you soaked, bewildered, and clutching an overpriced cucumber like it’s the last piece of sanity in this topsy-turvy world. Storm Bert has wreaked havoc across the UK, conveniently arriving on Discordian Day, while European weather tantrums have conspired to turn cucumbers into green gold. The connections between these events are as baffling as they are obvious—or, perhaps, nonexistent.
Storm Bert, whose name sounds more like a slightly grumpy neighbour than a raging tempest, has truly outdone itself. Trees are down, bins are airborne, and I saw one unfortunate umbrella achieve escape velocity. It is chaos, yes, but also strangely fitting for Discordian Day. How better to honour a celebration of disorder than with a storm that flings garden furniture into the next postcode? Some might call it coincidence; I call it cosmic alignment — or bad luck with a side of gale-force winds.
But while Bert whips the nation into soggy disarray, we are left grappling with another, more insidious crisis: cucumbers. Once a humble salad staple, they now sit on supermarket shelves with the air of aristocracy, priced as if grown in gold-flecked soil and watered by unicorn tears. Extreme weather in Europe is blamed, though I suspect Storm Bert might also be hoarding them in a secret, cucumber-filled lair. How else to explain the conspiracy of scarcity that has left us with extortionate prices and limp lettuce sandwiches?
And yet, there’s a certain poetry in this madness. On Discordian Day, the storm reminds us that nothing is fixed, not even garden gnomes, and cucumbers remind us that the absurdity of life sometimes comes with a price tag. Should we mourn the loss of affordable greens or celebrate the triumph of chaos over predictability? I, for one, am inclined to do both, ideally while eating a cucumber sandwich in the rain.
In closing, I must ask: was Storm Bert a Discordian plot, or merely an overzealous weather system with impeccable timing? Are cucumbers truly scarce, or are they secretly unionising? Or perhaps this letter itself is the answer: a whirlwind of confusion, misunderstanding, and misplaced priorities, much like life itself.
Yours in damp bewilderment and cucumber contemplation,
A Storm-Struck Shopper