Butter on My Bread

Yesterday, I was offered a sandwich for lunch by my client. It was one of those packaged ones, probably purchased from the local Tesco – there being one a few minutes walk away. On biting into it, I was sharply reminded why I don’t buy these things anymore.

There was a time when you could buy a decent sandwich from a local shop – I used to buy them from W H Smith at Temple Meads station when I worked as a signalling manager and they were tasty, juicy things too. Now, however, what you get is two slices of dry bread plonked either side of whatever filling resides inside. In yesterday’s case, cheese salad. The cheese was okay and the salad was nice and crisp as salad should be. But the bread was bone dry to the point of being virtually inedible. I don’t much like mayonnaise, so have always sought sandwiches with butter.

These days, it seems a chore to find even mayo in a sandwich and butter, being a dairy product and presumably swilling in cholesterol, is verboten it seems. The health fascists have decided that butter is not in our best interests. The sandwich makers appear to have fallen in line and simply stopped using it. The consequence of this is sandwiches that are, frankly, dreadful. That’s the trouble with all this health freakery – anything that tastes good is bad for you. The healthy option tastes like cardboard.

There is, of course, a solution. I don’t buy sandwiches, I make my own and I spread a nice chunk of butter on each slice of bread before putting in a decent slab of English Cheddar.

“Nobody,” he said,
As he slid down the banisters,
“Nobody,
My darling,
Could call me
A fussy man –
BUT
I do like a little bit of butter to my bread!”

A A Milne