The obligatory toast post

Sunday 8 February 2009

Sure as night follows day, and grumpy hangover follows binge-drinking, toast follows cereal at breakfast time. And this routine prevails not only when I sit down to break my sleep-induced fast, but when I sit down to write a two-part little something about that both venerable and vulnerable meal.

I say “two-part”, but as a matter of fact I will probably make that into three, for I have already come up with a number of things I should have but forgot to mention, and I would wager that that number of neglected points will soon have two digits.

But enough! I will certainly have a lot of bits and bobs with which to fill my third article if I continue like this, writing a phenomenal introduction which has already left its muddy footprints on the 100-word mark and is threatening to swell to 150.

I’m going to start by mentioning bread. It seems like a sensible thing to do, since toast that doesn’t involve bread is like a strawberry milkshake that doesn’t involve strawberries (i.e. one from McDonald’s), or wine that doesn’t involve any grapes. Bread is the backbone of toast.

I am a wholemeal bread man, as evinced by my regular visits to the lavatory, which you will be delighted to learn that I enjoy. My lack of some sort of shiny, white portable computing device means that I cannot use these trips to update Twitter, as some people do, but nevertheless I can eat a sandwich, or read a book, or write my next Nobel Prize–winning novel.

When it comes to toast, white bread is marginally better, I reckon. But when you’re in the brave new world of bread that has been untouched by the little finger of toaster, eating such spongy slabs of flimsiness is akin to wiping one’s posterior area with sandpaper. The slight lack of superiority on the toast front is more than made up for by the all-round versatility of wholemeal stuff.

We used to get our bread direct from the local bakery. But the local bakery shut down, perhaps a bit of a victim of the crunchiness of credit. Now, we consume a terrific variety of different breads, anything we can get our grubby mitts on, and the spontaneity is frightfully exciting.

The other day, for example, we had a bread with seeds on top. Sunflower seeds. It was nice, and strangely nostalgic, because we seedy bread had it when I was knee-high to a plastic chair. It’s the closest thing to nostalgia a youngster like this one can get their grubby teeth into. They didn’t even give us that well-known condition where flowers grow inside your body. How about that‽

And last month, we had a nice, if floppy, Hovis loaf. It looked like buttocks. I think there’s a photograph of it somewhere, but I deleted it when I was going through a chimping phase.

Occasionally, we will make our own bread. It doesn’t usually resemble bread, rather some sort of sponge made from concrete, but don’t tell my mother I said that. I don’t – I say it’s “the best bread yet” when it may be slightly edible; it’s called being economical with the truth – but fortunately, we haven’t had some for quite a while, and are supporting the people who make them ridiculous shrink wrapper things.

We also have a plastic car powered by used peppermint teabags, and we power our low-energy lightbulbs using the solar panels on the blades of the wind turbine in the back garden, and wipe our arses with second-hand toilet paper. Oh, we’re not very virtuous really.

Butter is a strange thing. I use it when I can, because it adds lovely texture. But when there is none of the stuff in the house, or I am in the company of an health buff, I do not mind. The vapours that gather when the slice of toast is laid down more than compensate. And am I the only one who is a little upset to see the drops of melted butter that have fallen through the cracks onto the plate?

I want to talk about Marmite. When I talk about Marmite, good things generally happen. But I will leave that until next time. This, originally destined to be a humble two-parter, will become a trilogy. See you tomorrow, when the final episode comes at you like a hedgehog that has confused a herd of ants for a magnifying glass.