The tragedy of disappearing food

I have a slightly compulsive approach to food. Despite the fact that my mother is eminently sensible and would encourage my brother and me to eat a wide variety of foodstuffs, never really allowed snacking and was in control of our sugar intake, the more devil-may-care attitude of my father towards our health included allowing us to eat/drink condensed milk straight from the tin, serving 'experimental' dishes based loosely on recipes he had cut out of the paper and a completely unfathomable love of faggots and lardy cake which he tried (unsuccessfully I might note) to imbue us with. These contrary approaches somehow combined to form a bit of a monster - I have incredibly faddy eating habits, often falling in love with a product for weeks on end, only to abandon the industrial quantities I have purchased when a new treat takes my fancy. As a child I used to go into raptures when allowed to eat frozen peas, raw dried pasta and whole cucumbers. As an adult, with full editorial control over what I eat, recent food affairs have included tapenade (consumed with every meal at the height of its popularity), chav-wiches (a salt-and-vinegar crisp filled savoury muffin which makes me feel wrong, yet right all at once) and the current favourite, Belgian waffles with a dusting of icing sugar (our tolerance of dust is surprisingly high, so this is more generous than it might otherwise be). Despite the fact that the Boy Wonder mocks me mercilessly for the manner in which I acquire favourite foods, he is often the originator of a particular fad, but where he revisits a long-neglected foodstuff with interest and nostalgia, I will sample it already knowing that it wouldn't take much to make it onto my food-of-the-month list. The only problem (as far as I can see - if other people have a problem with the way I conduct my faddery then it's no concern of mine) with the way I fall in love with certain products is that there is a distinct correlation between the ease of procurement of a certain food item and the amount I love it. Unfortunately, the correlation is inverse, and so I often find myself fruitlessly searching for foodstuff which my brain and stomach are telling me must be there, but my eyes are putting up arguments like 'Seriously - if they were going to be anywhere, they'd be here, and they're not, so just try somewhere else. No, you haven't forgotten what they look like, this shop just doesn't sell them.' The most calamitous example of this phenomenon is without doubt rice paper. My love of rice paper began when I was younger, probably about six, and would be given money to go to the shop round the corner from my Dad's to buy sweets. Even at that age, I would regularly clear the shop of their rice paper stocks, buying 50 sheets at a time, occasionally accompanied by some sherbet to make my own version of flying saucers. Then, as adulthood encroached, I kind of forgot about rice paper, writing it off as a treat from my past. So when the Co-op round the corner from our old flat started selling it, I was entranced. I would regularly go and buy 10 packets of perhaps 40 or 50 sheets each, polishing them all off within days, and guarding them jealously, despite the Boy Wonder's palpable lack of desire to steal them. When the Co-op suddenly changed sweet supplier and stopped stocking them, I was sad, but once again I came to terms with the fact. Then, when we moved to The Village, I was delighted to discover that the newsagent a mere 200 meters from our house sold rice paper. I was overcome with excitement, and cleaned them out on the first occasion I spotted them. The nice lady behind the counter looked at me as though I had a problem, so I told her that I did, impressing on her at the time my excitement at having discovered an outlet of this near-forgotten foodstuff so close to our new home. So, imagine my disappointment when the shop closed temporarily for refitting (and apparently installing a tardis as it is about twice the size now, and that can't just be down to the clever positioning of everything next to everything else, regardless of whether there is room for customers to actually move around) and re-opened in a blaze of glory, but with a new generic sweet supplier and no room at the inn for the brightly coloured sweets of which I had almost got used to having a regular supply. That was it - the last time I came across rice paper was in a shop somewhere in the middle of nowhere and when I bought their entire stock, I was told that even they wouldn't be ordering it again, being as I was the only person to even consider purchasing the stuff, let alone demonstrating any enthusiasm. So, whilst I can accept that I am in a minority (my brother will eat rice paper, but I don't think he dreams about it like I do), I cannot accept that someone willing to buy copious amounts of the stuff cannot find anywhere which will sell it - I can't promise that I will eat enough to sustain an entire factory, but I could easily promise that you would only need two or three more like me to achieve that goal...