It's Plastic

Today

This morning Paul woke up and demanded toast & marmalade & frothy coffee for breakfast. "We've no bread", I warned "But I'll pop up to the shop to get some. Do they sell bread?" "Yes, as it's a Saturday", replied Paul. Not waiting to find out why the residents of the village only seem to want bread on Saturday I duly popped.

Started to prepare the toast. Paul complained that the bread was plastic. "All they had, I'm afraid," I replied and got on with the job.

In My Day

On one occasion, when I was about 10, we had a jaunt to the Maritime Museum at Greenwich. Greenwich was a little out of our normal beat and it was quite a lengthy journey by bus to get there.

I remember little about the museum, save that it was in quite grand surroundings, but I do remember stopping at a little cafe for afternoon tea.

That was in the days when they gave you bread and butter with your tea. The bread was composed of pretty well perfect rectangles, soft, thin and uniformly sliced. Mamma marvelled. "This bread is wonderful", she enthused "Where did you get it?"

"Ah!", said the waitress, "It's Wonderloaf." And she brought out a packet to show us. Mamma touched the waxy packaging and the softness - not a hint of a crust. And so beautifully thin. Wonderful for cucumber sandwiches, no crusty bits to struggle with, no bread knife to wield. Wonderloaf indeed.

Which is what we ate from from that time on.

Despite the snobbery (and I can put away a bit of sundried tomato ciabata with the best of them), I rather enjoyed my plastic bread, toasted, with low-fat butter and extremely good French plum jam.