A broad and perhaps brave statement: Australians don’t really get the bacon sandwich. Too often hit and miss, served on toasted sourdough (texturally nowhere near as pleasing as soft white bread), there’s also a tendency towards additions beyond the core ingredient. A fried egg with bacon is agreeable, but it becomes a bacon and egg sandwich (roll or butty), and shouldn’t be sold as anything but. Scrambled egg or a puck like omelette is an abhorration. And avocado? Well, I’ll tell you what you can do with your avocado, mate.
I shouldn’t let it irk me, I know, but if there’s a food that talks to me, of both where I’m from and being a younger man, it’s the bacon sandwich.
In my first week of university crowded into a neighbour’s kitchen, drinking rough as guts white wine and homemade vodka Red Bulls, I chanted “BACON, BACON” louder and louder as a debate raged about how we were going to feed our late-night cravings. My accent was not yet flattened by 25 years south of the Pennines, and this chant was something of a northern culinary war cry. Years later, graduated and in serious employment, a girl I’d fancied at the time approached me in a pub. “Bacon!” she greeted me warmly. I’m not sure she knew my real name.
Memories of hungover mornings are sandwiched between soft white bread. The pop and hiss of bacon cooking, and the aroma which is as much the experience as the eating. It takes me to the first house that I owned and lived solo in. A two-bedroom semi (more like a terrace) in a seen-better-days Derbyshire town. I was impressed, I told people, by its proximity to Nottingham where I worked, and to the M1 which gave me easy access to London and Leeds. That’s the kind of estate agent patter that makes you sound like an astute young man. I didn’t mention that consideration was given to the 10-second walk to the corner shop; a saviour of single men of all ages.
Saturday mornings on a sliding scale of slightly dusty to oh fuck I’m never drinking again, I’d make that walk to the corner shop. Depending on where I was on the scale I’d wince at the beep-boop as I pushed the door open. On seeing that I wasn’t a youth the shopkeeper would go back to his newspaper. On autopilot I’d move through the shop grabbing a soft white loaf which I’d covertly inspect for tiny dots of mould, and a large packet of cheap bacon.
If I could have my time again, I’d pitch it to a commissioning editor at Channel 4. The elevator pitch: an urban cross of Supermarket Sweep and Old Enough! where against the clock, faintly inebriated contestants rendered slightly pathetic by their after work over-indulgence must make their way to and through their local corner shop, blindfolded and befuddled; on a mission to collect an ever more complicated list of breakfast ingredients. I’d call it, Breakfast of Champions.
If the day was to be solely about Friday night recovery I’d detour to the DVD alcove at the back of the shop which smelt faintly of rising damp and more prominently of mouldy onions. I’d grab a pick n mix of mindless action and romantic comedy and then dump it all on the counter as I turned and grabbed enough Space Raiders – poor man’s Monster Munch – to see me through the day. I’d then slowly walk the metres to my front door with my emergency provisions in a plastic bag so thin that splitting was a real danger. A system developed out of actual or near disaster: bread always on the bottom, Space Raiders, and then sharp-edged packet of bacon at the top. Milk or orange juice must always be carried separately.
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