There is much in the news these days about the credit crunch, but this should not lead us to neglect many other important crunches. I sometimes worry that less attention is paid to some crunches because they lack the alliterative quality of the credit crunch, which of course makes it a favourite of headline writers and broadcasters. Actually, it’s not quite true that I “sometimes” worry about this. If truth be told, my fretfulness about neglected crunches is starting to consume my every waking thought. Yesterday, for example, I was standing upon a bridge, staring off into the distance, buffeted by a gale, and all I could think of was the fact that the credit crunch is pushing some of my preferred crunches off the front pages. I don’t have any useful media connections – or, to be more precise, my people don’t have any connections with their people – so it’s not as if I can just send a few metal tapping machine messages to selected newspaper crunch reporters and put pressure on them to cover other crunches. Would that I could! What I did instead, yesterday, was to trudge disconsolately home and to spend a fruitful few hours studying Pebblehead’s bestselling paperback The Bumper Book Of Crunches. I can recommend this fantastic, and very fat, book to anyone who seeks to broaden their knowledge beyond the credit crunch. It is packed with crunch-related facts, anecdotage, illustrations, diagrams, and even its very own cleverly-crafted crunchiness.
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Until I read this post, crunches rarely, if ever, flitted across my consciousness. Now, I have difficulty thinking of anything else.
Alliterative crunches do seem to prevail. Here in North America, people can enjoy the Condo Crunch as a viable alternative to those sated with talk of credit crunch.
A number crunch, or number crunching, is also a favourite, eschewing alliteration in favour of assonance. And, if you go into a gym, you can see people indulging in simple and unadorned crunches. And, it seems that if there is enough matter in the universe, time will end with a big crunch, or more alliteratively (as seems to be the way with crunches) cosmic crunch.
The world seems to abound with crunches. I have to buy Pebblehead’s book.
Phil
I wonder how many times ab crunches have lost out to dark chocolate coated ginger crunches!
I’m waiting for the Cormorant beak crunch…
Or, maybe, a touch of ice chaos…
It is a rarely reported fact that former Beatle and purveyor of mystic wisdom George Harrison was at the time of his death in the process of establishing a Crunch Awareness Foundation on a privately owned heath in Yorkshire. Home office records now available under the Freedom of Information Act show that applications had been made for work permits for seven venerable yogic statisticians from Bhutan, who would lead studies in the Foundation’s £3.4 million geothermically-heated Crunch Centre. Alas, key documents had not been signed and spite of the fact that funding had been put in place the project stalled. I believe that there is somewhere an online petition to the heirs of the Harrison estate to re-engage this munificent and much-needed work. The Crunch Centre still stands, warm, dry and unused, its distinctive tri-furcated spire visible from the A59 near Skipton.