The perfect bacon sandwich

On a message board I occasionally (ie 22 hours out of the 24 I have allotted to me daily) venture on to, someone posted a question ‘what is the perfect bacon sandwich?’. This is an unspeakably tough thing to ask. I thought I had the answer, and then I came up with a better one, which in turn proved to be not as good as the next one I thought up. This chain of bacon butty one-upmanship went on for some time, until I decided to ignore the question and concentrate on more pressing aspects of my life, such as getting a job, having a shave, and completing the final historical challenge on Brian Lara Cricket on the Playstation 2.

In the end, the guy from the forum plumped for the slightly modish and rakish, ‘bacon in a white roll with brown sauce’. I think simplicity could be the key here, but I don’t want to think too hard about it again, I lost two days of my life to this puzzle, and that’s two more than I can spare.

It turned out that this guy was impressing, or trying to impress his new missus with their first breakfast in bed. My, I thought, how noble. If I ever get them to the stage where they need breakfast, it’s usually a fair bet a simple bacon sandwich isn’t going to rescue the evening.

A few years ago I, when I was manager of a bar in Lancaster, I got chatting to a customer who had come in for some lunch. She’d come in with a group of her studenty friends and she was, I’m at pains to point out, fairly easy on the eye. I did my whole relaxed, funny guy schtick, and she mentioned she’d be at a club that evening and if I was out and about, I should meet up with her. Just, you know, if I fancied it. Being as cool as Paul Newman and Johan Cruyff put together, I played it down, and suggested I was busy, but if there was a window of opportunity (I didn’t actually use the term ‘window of opportunity’, that would have ruined everything) I’d pop down and see her.

Of course I was there. Never look a gift horse in the mouth, my Grandad used to tell me, without fully explaining what a gift horse is or was. I bought her a drink, we had a little dance and at the end of the night she was asking if she could walk me home, which was an amusingly forward swapping of gender roles.

When we got to my flat, and had partaken in a session of what swimming pool warning posters call ‘heavy petting’, she asked if I had any protection. I had a small can of pepper spray my mate had bought me home from France, but this, she assured me, wasn’t what she had in mind. We both went to bed slightly frustrated, but I promised her that in the morning, I would remedy the situation.

Morning came, and I got dressed and legged it down to the local super market. As well as picking up ’something for the weekend’ I decided to wow her with a sumptuous breakfast spread. I got some croissants, bonne maman jam, orange juice, and some fruit salad. I really went to town on the stereotypical, trying too hard to be romantic, breakfast. My basket was overflowing with products that could salvage this one night stand gone bad, and hopefully transform it in to a full day of filthy, gymnastic, animalistic sex.

When I got back to the flat, the girl was stirring from her sleep. I told her I’d popped out to get supplies and presented her with a breakfast in bed which I hoped would persuade her that her immediate future lay with me. It worked a treat. It was textbook stuff. She leaned over to me and kissed me, “Did you get those condoms then?” she asked.

“Oh bollocks.” I replied. “I fucking forgot.”

I had spent so long thinking about breakfast, the sole purpose of my mission to Sainsbury’s had slipped my mind. After I walked her home, I never saw her again.

I’m not Jack Bauer. Or Danny Wallace.

Danny Wallace, in his latest phoned-in offering in Shortlist Magazine, recounted how he twice foiled shoplifters in Boots on Regent Street. He’s nuts, man. Why place yourself in harm’s way like that? Was he getting paid for it? Did he stand to gain anything from this act of altruistic heroism? Did he bollocks. I suppose, knowing he has a weekly column in one of the less shit freeby papers to fill, he’s got to put himself in these positions, but I still think he was foolish. I’d rather Boots lost a thousand pounds worth of shower gels than risk getting my face punched in, or my indoor supers scuffed. But hey, this says a lot about me, and a lot about Danny Wallace, I suppose.

A couple of Christmases ago, I was shopping for presents in Boots, Lancaster. I had intended to get my girlfriend some perfume, the DKNY red delicious, but they only had the green. Or vice versa, I forget the details (Danny Wallace wouldn’t have, and that’s why he’s writing for Shortlist, and I’m writing for, well, no one). So instead I decided to buy myself some haribo star mix and a tracker bar. I needed sustenance if I was going to make it out of Boots at Christmas time. Sustenance and brain food.

Trying to find my way out of the throng of mentalists that made up the clientele, I bumped in to a guy I know, who used to drink in the Wetherspoons I worked at. He was a little bald Manc, as dodgy as any stereotype I wish to throw at him, and under his arms he had loads of gift boxes.

“Alright mate? He said. “Doing some last minute Christmas shopping?” He must have noticed the tracker bar in my hand I suppose.

I didn’t answer straight away. I had a mouth full of nuts and oats, and this was one person I didn’t want to shower in them. Though a muesli face pack is an excellent way to exfoliate, or so I’m told. But now, just as it wasn’t back then, isn’t the time to get in to a discussion about that. I rapidly finished my mouthful of Tracker, and replied, “Yeah.”

“Well,” said the dodgy Manc, “Meet me in Ruxtons (a rough pub in town named, appropriately enough, after a famous Lancaster murderer) in quarter of an hour, you can buy some of these off me.” And with that he slipped the gift boxes under his jacket and disappeared in to the crowds.

Blimey, I thought. How rude. Shall I tell a staff member? Shall I call a police officer? Or maybe perform a citizen’s arrest? I did none of those things. I was fairly stressed as it was, and I could do without having to take an hour or two out of my day to deal with the bureaucracy that surrounds being a hero. So I let him go his way, and I went mine, which was to Accessorize, to get the missus a hairband, or bangle, or cheap ring that turned her finger green.

I suppose a good pay off would have been if I’d gone to meet him at Ruxton’s and bought the DKNY gift set I was looking for. But I didn’t. And I’m not going to lie, because it would also have been a criminal offense. And as well as not be bothered with having to deal with the bureaucracy of heroism, the same stands for villainy. I’m content, you know, just being anonymous, and occasionally straddling that oh so thin line between good and bad. Like Ghost Rider, but with more skin and fewer flames.

Which reminds me. A few months later whilst walking home from the pub with a kebab and bottle of 7 Up, I stumbled across a bin some idiots had set on fire. The damage had been done, and just a few smouldering embers were left. But these, having been a member of my school’s Fire Prevention Youth Quiz Team, could still be dangerous. I can’t abide danger. So I emptied my 7 Up over the remnants of the fiery disaster, and stamped out the rest. No one was there to see my act of derring do, and until today I’d not told anyone about it. I didn’t let it affect my life, and I didn’t want the limelight. As I say, I’m happy with anonymity.

That’s a real hero, Danny Wallace.