I have a new favourite sausage. A sausage I could happily eat it every day. A sausage so good that I feel sad after I have finished it.

I’m fully expecting Marks & Spencer to discontinue it. This happens to all my favourite food. It’s as though my taste buds are so misaligned with the rest of the Great British public that if I happen upon a food item that I love, it’s a sure bet that the rest of the country won’t touch it.

I remember when they discontinued the steak and blacksticks blue cheese sandwich. That was also M&S, probably 14 or 15 years ago. I have neither forgotten nor forgiven them. One day I intend to corner business luminary Stuart Rose, the brand’s executive chairman at the time of this debacle, and give him a piece of my mind, providing, of course, that he’s still alive, and my exclusive diet of pork, truffle and parmesan sausages hasn’t killed me.  

This is why it’s a good idea to learn how to make things for yourself. Had I noted down the sandwich ingredients prior to discontinuation, I could surely have replicated it in the comfort of my own kitchen.

Sausages, though. I haven’t the faintest idea of how to make my own sausages. Come to think of it, I’ve no idea how to procure truffles. Do I need to first procure a truffle pig, and if so, do I add the truffle pig to the sausage after its work is complete?

What I really need is a butcher. A butcher with a truffle pig. That would set me right. My late grandma had a butcher. She used to serve up potted beef once a fortnight. My siblings and I would delight in enquiring as to whether the butcher killed the cow himself. He did, or so claimed my grandma. One of my siblings is a vegetarian now. The other two are vegans. How times change. And you don’t see much potted beef these days either.

Now I think of it, it’s possible that plant-based food and meat-free diets may also contribute to the discontinuation of my favourite sausage, although the leading brands’ recent sales figures have been underwhelming. Old habits die hard.

I believe that the expression ‘old habits die hard’ was the inspiration for the movie ‘Die Hard’, but I could be wrong. I very much doubt Hans Gruber was a vegetarian. Sadly, there is no conclusive data to show how many vegetarians there were in East Germany during the 1980s, although apparently, it was a challenge to get hold of bananas. Certainly, there were sausages. Good old Soviet Doctor sausages. Citizens of the former Soviet Union are nostalgic for them to this day. Just as I will be once they discontinue my favourite sausage. It’s only a matter of time.