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.