Will’s World: ‘Famous’ bacon butty was one of my rasher decisions
© Richard Stanton Trains are my favourite mode of transport. I like the sound they make, I like the architecture of the stations, I like the people-watching, I like looking out the window at the countryside.
I even like the jeopardy of running to catch a connecting train that’s leaving in two minutes and breathlessly jumping through the doors just as they’re about to shut.
What can I say, you get your kicks where you can at my age.
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But it was on a recent train journey with the present Mrs Evans that I nearly fell out of love with them.
It started with an announcement: “Ladies and gentlemen, the buffet car located in coach F is now open, and this morning we’re delighted to offer you our meal deal of any hot drink with our famous bacon roll for just £4.50.”
Not just any bacon roll, mark you, but a famous one.
On a roll
With every couple, there’s one who’s so thrifty that they make Mr Burns from The Simpsons look like a paragon of philanthropy, and one who’s childishly impulsive and easily distracted by shiny things.
And so it proved once again, as my book now forgotten, thoughts of this famous bacon roll infiltrated my brain so thoroughly that visions of it danced before my eyes.
What could it be like, I wondered. How did it get famous in the first place? Had I missed the episode of MasterChef where it featured?
Perhaps it has a royal seal of approval or won some sort of prestigious culinary award?
I dreamily imagined thick-cut British bacon, encased in freshly baked white bread spread thickly with proper butter and drizzled provocatively with just a hint of brown sauce.
It was no good, I was going to have to get one.
Quickly shaking off the present Mrs Evans’ vocal disapproval, I headed off to coach F with a spring in my step and a song in my heart.
“Good morning my good man, I’ll have a cup of tea and one of your famous bacon rolls, please,” I said cheerily.
I should have realised something was wrong when he grunted in response and turned around to heat something up in the microwave.
But I was blinded by my excitement and, after a few minutes was heading back to my seat, clutching a paper bag containing the famous bacon roll, breathless with anticipation.
Crime scene
I sat down in my seat, gently unwrapped it from the tinfoil, smiled at my still frowning wife, who was eating an apple that she’d picked up at breakfast, like the saint she is, and took a bite.
I’m not remotely exaggerating when I say it tasted like a combination of disappointment, depression and diabetes.
I’ll start with the roll itself, which was drier than Gandhi’s flip-flop and pumped with more preservatives than Donald Trump.
It hadn’t as much as been shown a butter knife, let alone been spread with the dairy industry’s finest.
And the bacon, oh the bacon.
It wasn’t just an insult to the farmer who’d worked so hard to produce it, let alone the pig itself. Nay, it was a hate crime.
Thinner than a communion wafer, and with more water in it than meat, there isn’t a police officer in the land who wouldn’t have taken me seriously if I’d called 999 and reported it there and then.