There was no denying that the long boom of post-war consumer capitalism had finally arived. It was evidnt in Formica table tops, three-piece suites, Hoovers, hula-hoops, sonic-booming Meteor Jets, the re-painted Co-operative Society mobile van ("Share number 26644"), and a space age-looking vending machine which dispensed cartons of strawberry flavoured milk.
Although they had been tucking into bars of white chocolate in Switzerland since the nineteen thirties, three decades were to pass before they first arrived in Twiverton. Reg Downhill was one of the first to buy one, and - unbelievably - the delicious white chocholate was not to his liking. The sinking feeling of watching Ref throwing the entire bar into the mud spattered gutter was one of the low points of an entire era. A highpoint was hearing that 'Bully' Brown of Shores Way had been arrested for indecent exposure. Who says there is no relationship between character and fate!
Although none of us realised it at the time the selling of bars of white chocolate in the High Street was the opening skirmish in a bare-knuckled battle for economic surpremacy waged between the village's two newsagents. In a lecture at the Bath Literary and Scientific Institute Dai 'Tolstoy' Lectic said these 'Paper Wars' can be seen as a microcosm of the battle between old wealth and new money that was about to change the face of late-twentieth century British capitalism.
It is just as well Dai's lecture was never published. The libel lawyers Cart and Erbuck would have moved in, Dai 'Tolstoy' Lectic's reputation would have been torn to shreds and his dreams of having a column in the Twiverton Literary Supplement would have been blown out of the water.