Imagine if you can for a moment that you, dear reader, are a labourer installing a new water mains pipe on a busy road, enduring lingering frustrated glances from drivers whose journeys you have prolonged. Imagine, in another lifetime, making your fifth hired-van journey of the day between your old house and new home, transporting all of your belongings alone to save money on a removal company; do you really need to keep all of those books? Imagine, perhaps more familiarly, that you are Nick, 30 ans, commuting for two hours in the morning sans breakfast for an eight hour session of the opposite of red light therapy.
An image comes to you. One of solace, of joy. One of the jumbo breakfast roll
Your temperament is bleak. Happiness seems a foreign concept. All sense of humanity is gone; you are an automaton, and routine has become unconscious. Eleven o’clock rolls around with all the triumph of a hospital death, and then — what’s this? At last — you have it. Faintly, in the back of your mind, you find the solution, the ointment for all the day’s ailments, the answer for the growing hunger in your stomach. Proceeding from your heat oppressed brain, an image comes to you. One of solace, of joy. One of the jumbo breakfast roll.
Found throughout the British Isles under corner shop heat lamps and behind service station windows, the jumbo breakfast roll occupies an important place in the contemporary zeitgeist, a steadfast sentinel unmoving throughout this changing world. Cheap, ultra-processed, and unhealthy, viewed by an outsider this humble food might be regarded as little more than a culinary cry for help. But that is missing the point.
Immortalised by the Irish comedian Pat Shortt in his surprisingly catchy 2006 number one hit of the same name (yes, really), the jumbo breakfast roll is defined as including two eggs, two sausages, four pieces of bacon, and one piece each of black and white pudding, squashed into a bread roll, often with sauce, butter, or both. While ingredients vary from place to place and the precise name of such provisions can differ, the sentiment of this sandwich is the same everywhere. It exists to provide answers when you do not have enough energy left to ask any questions.
When you find yourself trundling into a fuel forecourt after a four hour drive, a far-cry from the Gloucester services, you can count on one thing to be there. When you have an unexpected meeting right when you were planning to take lunch, you can’t waste time waiting for your meal to be cooked fresh. It is both nostalgic and fulfilling, reliable and constant yet easily customisable. Like a bridge over troubled water, the jumbo breakfast roll is there for you in your weakest and weariest moments.
In recent years, however, I have encountered a problem. Not with the perfect sandwich, of course, but with its popularity. Despite a plethora of newly gentrified streets offering a bounty of cafes and delis, each with their own beautifully curated menus and handcrafted food, I find the longest queues and fewest serving staff at the Spars and Centras dotted along the high streets. There are few things more unjust in this world than spending most of your lunch break queuing along the soft drinks fridges, eventually reaching the promised land of the food counter only to be told “we’ve run out of bacon”. Even those facing the horrors of rationing during the Second World War were spared such saturnine scenes.
If there are any Labour think-tank contributors reading this who would like a policy proposal, then I invite you to consider UBJBR: Universal Basic Jumbo Breakfast Rolls. Dish them out like bread for pigeons and reap the rewards of a renewed appreciation of Real British Values. Perhaps the wealthy might even forgo their rolls, allowing them to be donated to those more in need of nourishing food, like NHS catering companies. Few things are likely to win back the working class voters as well as this. Surely this is a plight which the toolmaker’s son would understand.
There are, of course, the health concerns associated with this kind of food, one of many plaguing the ordinary man. While the jumbo breakfast roll may be good for one’s spirit, the same cannot be said for one’s aorta. With the government legislating away man’s right to smoke, only alcohol may stand as the buffer between normality and mandatory Pret pasta bowls for lunch. Let’s hope that common sense wins this contentious future debate.
