Can you or can’t you?

Bought a packet of duck legs confit the other day and found this note on the back. What on earth does it mean? That you could have frozen the stuff if the manufacturer hadn’t frozen it first, but now you mustn’t? That you can freeze it once, but not twice? Or merely that the night before the final copy was approved the whole Packaging Design Dept. (Chilled Foods Division) had been overdoing the Macedonian Merlot (5% off) at a party celebrating the engagement of Darren (Asst. Manager, Pack Warnings Team) to Sharon from Accounts?

I wasn’t much bothered because I didn’t want to freeze it anyway (we ate the legs that night: they weren’t particularly nice), but I was curious to know the answer so, as it’s a free number and I was having a quiet day, I telephoned the supermarket’s Careline.

Young Beverley was polite but couldn’t understand my question, let alone answer it. She was able to bring up a picture of the pack on her monitor but that didn’t really help either of us much; she thought it might be a new product (so what?) and couldn’t really see why I was telephoning her. After a bit of chat she said she would get someone to call me back.

No-one did so, and nearly a fortnight has passed. Not worth taking it further, I think, and I shall not name the supermarket since I do not want them to be upset about this; the poor lambs are just recovering from the the ordeal of fighting off a £10 billion bid from a private equity consortium, and we all know how that feels.