This Isn't About Them

Strictly speaking, this BLT isn’t a BLT at all. It’s a BRT but nobody gives a shit. The R stands for Rocket, which may or may not be real lettuce. It’s green enough, and they stack it in the salad aisle, but you can never be sure. Is it the greatest sandwich ever made? Hard to say. There are others that stand in the ring with it.

1.There’s the crayfish and rocket number. Pret used to make one if you were too refined to build your own.

2.There’s a piece on real chips with brown sauce. A working man’s meal once. God only knows if it’s survived the death of the deadly old chip pan.

3. Peanut butter and jam—strawberry jam, crunchy peanut butter. Smucker’s Goober will do in a pinch, though it’s grape and tastes like a far away childhood that never quite happened.

4. Pastrami and pickle, the New York kind, maybe with a slice of American cheese sweating between them like a couple on a cheap date.

5. Crisps of any sort, so long as they’re not vinegar, with a good smear of mayonnaise to ease the going.

6. Anchovies and mustard on toast. That one’s for the brave, or the lonely, or those who have no patience left for Presbyterian opinions about food. No need for salt but you might add a tomato.

I forgot the fish finger sarnie. There may be more. Thinking of all this tires a man.

The bread used to be the Scottish plain loaf. It was the standard. The one true bread for a chip sandwich. Now it’s gone. Possibly banned by the health men in grey suits in grey offices filled with blue screens. Maybe outlawed by the same quiet forces that kill off anything good. I can’t find any in the shops. It feels like something from an old fever ward, spoken of but never seen. Dark times. There are pale and new generations suffering this loss, but they don't even know it.

These days the world is full of white sourdough. Fashionable and fickle stuff. I'm stuck with it for now, leaning into the forces. Diet is important to the rich, essential but tricky for the poor. Two-fifty for seven or eight airy slices. Hardly the people’s bread. It tastes fine though but the cheaper loaves of supermarket junk just taste bad these days, though a good rye can surprise a man if he’s lucky enough to come across one. Tiger bread remains an alternative but lacks staying power.

Leave out the rolls, the stotties, the muffins, the brioche buns. They’re not the bread for a true sandwich. They’re something else and this isn’t about them.

Free Graphic

They (🍎) gave us, and everyone else I guess, a free graphic. So we feel we have to use it. Display it like a badge or a trophy. For whatever it means. Free-loaders. An imaginary bag of magic beans. We're just chimps accepting another banana tossed into the pen while they scoff fine food and wine uptown and maintain a safe distance from the zoo, the coal mine or the paddy field. We scratch each other and check for fleas or tics.

Every so often there's a bit of a fight between the stronger and bigger chimps in the pen or they'll pick on the weaker chimps because they caught a decent sized banana or just seemed contented, but nobody outside pays attention to that sort of thing. They're quite happy if we fight amongst ourselves instead of attacking the fence that keeps us trapped.

That's the truth about the state of the music industry and most of life in general. If you can't see that then you're clearly not looking, perhaps you're not bothered. I'm not bitter. I'm passed that. There's a numbness setting in. The temple of the low man. Life just goes on.