BEACHCOMBER

98 YEARS OLD AND STILL THOROUGHLY SOUPED UP...

YOU may recall that a week or so ago I was concerned at a report suggesting that someone may be planning to scale the Shard at London Bridge by climbing up a tower of soup cans. That prospect, I fear, rather blinded me to many of the figures in the same report. But now that I have had a chance to read them, I must say that my worries have only increased.

The survey, for Heinz soups, reveals, for example, that 43 per cent of people say that soup is their favourite food to enjoy on a rainy day. Yet my collection of other surveys conducted this year reveals that 43 per cent of people are very satisfied with their local area.

But if they enjoy soup so much when it is raining, does this mean that they are not satisfied with their local area when the sun is shining?

Or is it possible that they are enjoying their soup in a gloomy sort of way? They may, of course, be the people who live in particularly rainy towns in the UK and have moved there specifically because of the rain.

To try to resolve this dilemma, I consulted my Metasurvey list to see what I could find out about the other 57 per cent, who presumably don’t enjoy soup in the rain and are not satisfied with their local area. I was hardly surprised to find that 57 per cent of people confess to having sampled perfumes found in other people’s bathrooms.

I can only assume that they dropped in on the other people in order to get out of the rain, popped into the bathroom to dry off and splashed the perfume around to mask the smell of soup that suffused the house.

Further down the soup survey, however, I was astonished to discover that 45 per cent of the nation slip a can or two of soup into in their luggage when they go on holiday. Yet 45 per cent of people describe themselves as “adventurous cooks”. What, may I ask, is adventurous about opening a can of Heinz tomato soup when you are on holiday?

Could it be that 43 of the 45 per cent of self- styled adventurous chef holiday- making soup eaters are expecting rain and would not want to be without their favourite soup when it began to pour down? But if that is the case, who are the other two per cent?

Could they be the two per cent of people whose armpits do not smell? But if they are, then we musk ask why they are splashing them with perfume stolen from other people’s bathrooms?

One must, however, take into account the finding that 35 per cent of people say they enjoy soup at any time, any place, which may help explain why 35 per cent of adults don’t read for pleasure. Spilling one’s soup over a book takes all the pleasure out of reading, I expect. Furthermore, 35 per cent of women are worried by the costs associated with finding the perfect bra. Could it be that the reason they are eating so much soup is because they have spent all their money on undergarments and have none left for a decent meal? Is it any wonder, with all that going on, that 35 per cent of people don’t answer the home phone when it rings?