28: Spare Cheese

It had started in Tiverton but the problem was now national.  It was expected to be global by Christmas.  Everyone had too much cheese and there was no space to put the spare.

In time it would be resolvable, if cheese production was cut down or even banned temporarily.  But quotas and bans on cheese making didn’t sit well with buyers and producers alike and it didn’t solve the problem of excess cheese facing the British government now.

School children were the first to be targeted as a solution.  Instead of bringing back free school milk, ministers authorized free school cheese.  Every school child was entitled to 50g of cheese daily.  This was scaled back from the original 100g after janitors complained about the mess made by sickly pupils in PE lessons.

Next was the older generation.  Post offices stocked up and everyone in receipt of a state pension was presented with a large block of cheese in lieu of some of their weekly money.  Care homes received deliveries in bulk and menus were revamped to include a minimum of 1 cheese-based dish every day.

Cheese mountains slowly reduced but there was a still a stubborn amount of spare cheese, particularly in rural areas and Clacton, although nobody knew why that should be so.

Fondue set ownership became compulsory and sales of both cocktail sticks and pineapple chunks were excellent.

Top government scientists finally announced they had come up with a solution.  Everyone knew the moon wasn’t really made of cheese, but why not store all the spare cheese on the moon they said, so in future it really could be.