Age: Varies.
Appearance: Rubbery, sugary, unconvincingly designed to look like something more nutritious.
Such as? Bananas, strawberries, shrimps, mushrooms, fried eggs or rhubarb. Comedy variations include breasts and penises.
Chewable todgers? I don't remember seeing those at the pick'n'mix counter. They are a minority taste.
Does this Pass Note have something for readers who aren't smutty-minded 10-year-olds? You betcha! The Office for National Statistics has just added foam sweets to the basket of prices used to calculate inflation in the UK. To put it another way …
Interestingly would be good. If your income is in any way linked to inflation, it now depends ever so slightly on the price of rubbery shrimps.
Is that how they put it on the City pages? Not exactly. Shall we talk about the consumer price index first, or the retail price index?
You know what? I don't think we've got to the bottom of this basket business. It's a metaphor, of course …
Of course. … for a selection of goods and services designed to reflect current spending. It's revised every year, and for 2012 the growing popularity of foam sweets means the old bag of boiled or jellied sweets has been replaced by the bag of "sweets not chocolate".
Fascinating! Really?
Well, it would be if I worked for Haribo or someone like that. If I may drag you back to the ONS basket.
I love it when you're masterly. Other new arrivals include tablet computers such as iPads, teenage fiction such as the Twilight books, takeaway chicken and chips, stout, baby wipes and fresh pineapple.
Pineapple? The ONS has only just realised that people eat pineapple? Apparently so. Leaving the list, meanwhile, are stepladders, leisure centre memberships and film processing.
These changes must tell us something deeply significant about modern Britain. They certainly do. If only we hadn't wasted all our time talking about sweets.
Do say: "There's a party going on in my mouth!"
Don't say: "… and somebody's been sick on the carpet."
