Vegemite

 

It was on this day I was told that my relationship with Vegemite has come to an end. This is hard news to chew on. I can’t quite believe it. Only two months ago the sudden flare-ups inside my big toe were diagnosed as gout. Contrary to the opinions of friends, who explain this as due to my fondness for red wine, gout is inherited through the genes. Remedies are close to hand, essentially in the form of a tablet, take one per day for the rest of time. But no more Vegemite. My informative daughter has taken up the cause, studying diet information from every available gout outlet. Perhaps she needed, sensitively, to tell me about the Vegemite cancel just so I had time to let it sink in. So far, it hasn’t. Perhaps she was in mild shock herself. Food to avoid from now on is anything high in fructose or purines. No longer may I swirl anchovies into my favourite pasta con sarde, high in purines. Grapefruit is a fructose timebomb. Cabernet must be reduced to two, even just one, standard glasses per day. While Vegemite, a black well of yeast extract, or purines, now exists in the past tense for this person, almost lost for words. I am not amongst those who have stowed several small jars of the stuff in my luggage for friends, on the long haul to London, New York, Tokyo, but there has never been a week in my life where a yellow and red jar of the fabled spread could not be found in the pantry. Vincent Buckley, a man awake to sentiment, writes in his poem ‘Seasons’ of summer becoming autumn: “the foreign breezes flick the garden/ to a smell strong as vegemite,/ strong and drying out.” Lines that reminded me of something else I read recently about the nose of Vegemite. It was only last month the newspaper reported an outlandish plan by City of Melbourne Council to add the smell of Vegemite to the terms of the significant heritage value of the Vegemite Factory site at Fisherman’s Bend. The National Trust explained that scents are part of an emerging field called ‘olfactory heritage’, leaving me to ask if that includes carbon monoxide fumes from Holden cars, another product of the area. Sentiment has its own powers, whether it be to protect an old site based on its memorable pong, or to offer small consolation to the Vegemite-deprived. After all, as with red wine, the fine bouquet of the Australian condiment is but prelude to the taste itself. The sniff is distinctive, we like it, who doesn’t, yet more so is its sharp edge making unsubtle contact with the taste buds. My own favourite invention is two poached eggs on Vegemite toast, spinach optional, an invention that alas has overnight turned into a guilty pleasure, to be enjoyed at my own risk. I think of Lin Yutang: “What is patriotism but the love of the good things we ate in our childhood?” This does not make me feel any better, just for the moment, suddenly minus Vegemite.