On My Block

Whilst others prefer liquor and drugs, I am convinced that there is nothing that inspires me like the Cadbury Snack Block.
It used to be a cocktail of coffee, pseudoephedrine and Snack, but the first two made me feel aggressive and agitated. Now I reserve pseudoephedrine for colds, although I retain special affection for people addicted to cold and flu tablets. Many years ago I remember having a conversation with a man who was very passionate about the inspiring effects of Codral. I was at a party, I lost my pig mask and a guy trapped me in his room and made me read his journals.
Phew! It’s a good thing I don’t go to parties anymore, that I spend nights eating chocolate in my room. I keep the Snack in my desk drawer for moments where inspiration fails. When I am particularly stuck, I leave the drawer open and gobble piece after piece. I’ve convinced myself that if it’s in a drawer, I’ll eat less of it.
The attraction of the Snack block is the bright, gooey fillings inside each square. I like how there’s six different flavours (pineapple, strawberry, caramel, turkish delight, orange and the mystery pink flavour), each sticky and synthetic.
One time I bought a Snack block and found that instead of each square having a soft filling, it was solid chocolate. The patterns on the pieces were still intact, but instead of cleaving under the force of my bite and leaking goo, they were hard. With delight I called their consumer services line, and was sent a five dollar Coles voucher as compensation for the terrible experience. My letter was personally signed by Michelle Bruhn from Consumer Services! The notepaper had a fantastic montage of Cadbury Schweppes products down the side, beginning with a can of Solo and ending with a Yowie. It made me think of how much I’d like to have wallpaper with supermarket products on it. I’d find it very soothing. It would be like a supermarket catalogue, but without the distracting prices. Instead there’d just be the pure beauty of the different packaging designs.
Because I have to impose rules on my sweets consumption, I am only allowed to buy Snack block when it is on special at the supermarket. It’s too expensive at full price. Vic works with a man who’ll only buy chocolate if it is less than 1 cent a gram. Vic warned me that once the "cent a gram" rule is in my head, I won’t be able to buy chocolate without thinking of it. He was right. When I bought my latest Snack block, I spent a portion of the ride home dividing 220 cents by 150 grams. I couldn’t work it out exactly, but it was obvious that I hadn’t passed the cent a gram test, even if I factored in GST.