We got a mysterious cardboard package in the post from The Guardian newspaper today. it looked a bit like an Amazon package, and we were trying to remember if either of us had ordered any books or CDs from the paper. On opening it up, were were amazed and baffled to find — carefully shrouded in bubble wrap — a sheet of lasagne (uncooked) printed with the following text:

THE ESSENTIAL ITALIAN INGREDIENT

The new book, River Café Two Easy20 pages of gourmet Italian recipes exclusively revealed this Saturday

The Guardian

And — just in case any of the lucky recipients suddenly thought, "Oh, I'll make a very minimalist lasagne tonight!" — the bubble wrap was printed with the warning, "For promotional use only and strictly not for consumption".

I'll concede that it's probably the most unusual junk mail I've ever received, but how much must it have cost to send carefully wrapped sheets of pasta out to thousands of households, not to mention the waste of cardboard, plastic and fuel? It was certainly unsolicited, unless we failed to uncheck an obscure box somewhere which read:

Please send me promotional but functionally useless Italian comestibles.

The world gets weirder by the day.