The real thing...

I adore coffee - I drink buckets of the delicious brown stuff daily. 
I go loopy over strawberries - I pick punnets of the gorgeous pipped red baubles of goodness almost every decade.
I am very partial to oranges - I probably gorge at least a whole one (to myself) every single fortnight.

Give me something "coffee flavoured", or "strawberry flavoured", or "orange flavoured" and you might as well give me a live hand grenade as a pet, tell me that my name is really Herbert Augustus Bottlethwick and replace my CD collection with the entire back catalogue of New Kids On The Block, Boyzone and East 17.  The response would be broadly the same.  In actuality, the last of these three deplorable stunts on its own would be enough, but you surely understand me and my drift is got by you.

I trust that I am not alone in this, dearest Reader (I capitalise you, because you mean so much to me). 

I am sure you have experienced it when the last remnants of Christmas have been packed away in boxes in readiness for next year's joyous festivities, there always remains a sombre task.  The removal of those unedifying and highly inedible chocolates from the bottom of the Roses barrel or Quality Street tin.  You know the individuals to which I refer, I am convinced of it. 

The gooey strawberry one, which tastes like a medicine you once nervously queued for in a line at school. 
The tacky coffee individual, the inside of which must have been meticulously painted with creosote to procure such a flavour. 
The fluffy orange creature, with a texture that promises so much but which delivers a bite of such unbounded man-made sweetness that it must, simply must, be hiding a very bitter pill indeed.  I won't swallow it.  I won't swallow any of these aforementioned abominations.

I beg of you, dear food manufacturer (I don't capitalise you, for you have disappointed me).. 

Please, do not use colouring if your food colouring department only has available to it the palette equivalent to the six items in Crayola's "My First Crayon Set" (Not suitable for those under 18 months old or those working in food industry).. Making a food item the colour of the thing it is intended to taste like DOES NOT WASH (at least not on delicates and that's not going to work at above 40 degrees now, is it?).   Don't make me laugh (or retch).

Please, don't attempt to pull the wool over my tastebuds by use of the word "flavoured" in a smaller or less legible typeface carefully added to packaging like a feeble excuse whispered out of the side of the mouth whilst wearing a balaclava in a howling gale.   It just isn't good enough. I just want the real thing. No imitations. No facsimiles. No excuses.  No whey.

Please, in future, do not specify what your so-called "flavouring" is intended to be.  Go on, let me guess. Give me the mystery to solve. Leave the veil untouched.  Give me the enigma in chocolate form.

Perhaps then, and only then, I may come to admire your brown-creosote rounds.  I almost certainly could enjoy the pleasure of your succulent pink lozenge.  And I would find it in me to suck willingly on your fluffy bright candy pills. 

Until such time, I am sorry, I must decline. 

For even I have my standards. 

Although I'll lower them for a cheap double-entendre or three, obviously.