Breadaggeddon

I gave up bread the other week. Yeah, I know, it’s crazy. Why give up bread, I hear you cry (at the top of your lungs, right into my bloody ear), it goes with everything and it’s so cheap!

Well yeah, nuts to you. See, I used to be a bread addict. You know how people can get addicted to stuff? I’m talking the killer stuff here, the dangerous stuff: heroin, cigarettes, Celebrity Big Brother. Well I’m like that, but with bread; I used to get through a loaf a day. I’d toast it, grill it, eat it raw with ketchup… hell, I’d’ve probably worn it if you could form it into a decent collar. It was all bread, all the time.

I lived on sandwiches. Peanut butter was the mortar to my bready bricks, building my body into a mighty house. Of sandwiches. I couldn’t eat the things fast enough, and believe me I tried. Four slices of white bread, a thick old load of the crunchiest, peanutiest butter and I was ready to go. Nom nom nom. I’d eat those things all day long.

And when I discovered Tescos doing 50 cent white bread loaves? Damn, you’ve never seen anyone happier in all your life. It was like I won the bread lottery, my entry fee only being a smile and an empty shopping basket. Oh Lordy did I love that. Two, three, even four loaves at a time! The more I bought, the fewer times I’d have to leave the house to buy more. I could just sit in, eat sandwiches and stare at the wall, blissed out on floury goodness.

When I’d go out, I’d have something bread-related. Be it a pizza, or a baguette (don’t get me started on breakfast rolls; there’s a special circle of hell for tempting foods and there at the top, dishing out the punishment is a breakfast roll, with a whip made from melted cheese) or anything that comes with garlic bread as a standard. Hell, I remember one time I bought a whole roll of garlic bread from my local shop, baked it and ate it all in one sitting while watching an episode of M*A*S*H; truly I am made in God’s image.

I couldn’t get enough of the stuff. Whenever I went back to visit my long-suffering mother, she’d invariably have had to buy more bread. She barely touches the stuff, but as has already been established, if I had a meal that wasn’t able to be slapped between two glorious slabs of pure white awesome, I wouldn’t have it. “Sure I’ll have a tasty bowl of vegetable soup; very healthy. And sure I’ll have four slices of buttered bread for… erm… ‘mopping up duty’.”

If I wasn’t eating sandwiches, or mopping up other bits of bread with yet more bread, I’d be toasting it. I developed a Pavlovian response to the clunk sound of the pop-up toaster: as soon as I heard the ‘whup’ of the toast leaping out from the machine, I’d be out of my chair with a pre-buttered knife in my hand, just waiting to catch the bread on the way back down. Each slice was like it had been breathed on by angels and lovingly hugged into warmth by a kindly old nursemaid. Then, the quick, once over swipe of the butter knife and with lightning speed, it was past the lips and straight down the gullet. Bliss.

But then disaster struck and a few weeks ago the unthinkable happened: I got sick of bread. It was a feeling I’d never experienced before. I’d look at a loaf of bread and think: “nah, not today.” The first time it happened I was generally taken aback. Then I was taken aforward as I decided my brain was obviously not working right today and needed some bread to fuel its fire. So another sandwich was created, itself a marvel of modern culinary science, and another couple of hours of full-belly time occurred. But come my next feeding, the same idea popped into my head: “Nah, not today.”

I couldn’t believe it. What was wrong with me? Was I going mad? My brain was telling me not to have a sandwich, but my hand was already reaching for the cutlery drawer, ready to pull the shiny butter sword (for in my mind, it slew the hunger dragon) from its dark and lonely cave to fight another battle in the name of Truth, Justice and the Buttery Way! But instead, my other hand reached up to the cupboard and pulled out a cup-a-soup.

Wait, thought I, perplexed: I have cup-a-soups? Who has cup-a-soups? Is the reason I’m not wanting to eat bread because I have travel sickness after having accidentally fallen through a time portal to 1975? But while I was considering this strange time-travelling dilemma, the kettle was boiling in front of me and soon I had a cup-a-soup in my hand and no bread to dip.

Obviously, something was very wrong.

But the voice kept speaking. Every time I went to the local shop for a sandwich, I instead bought a salad. Clearly all was not right with the world; clearly I needed help.

So I asked the internet and the internet gave me an answer: INCREASE YOUR PENIS SIZE, IMPRESS THE GIRLS. So then I asked someone who wasn’t obsessed with my penis size and they told me that maybe I just wanted to eat properly and stop being so bloody lazy.

And that sort of made sense.

Since giving up bread, I now eat salads, have proper meals of vegetables and fish, and I only use peanut butter as it was originally meant: as an axle grease.

Truly, I am a modern renaissance man.