Morning Story, With A Heartfelt Appeal To America to Wake Up And Smell The Cereal.
Colin writhed and turned. He was asleep but thrashed against Genevieve, slumbering gently beside him. Remarkably, she didn’t wake but continued her own delicious dream in which her normally dimpled, doughy-white thighs were now a golden brown and some loving, unseen hand was caressing her with honey-butter lotions and oils.
A mere two hours before, Colin, Genevieve and the other soldiers had been lined up neatly and patiently, awaiting their instructions. They’d been kept quite literally in the dark about their mission, but they had all been raised together and knew that they could count on each other. They’d been told from as far back as they could remember that they had been born for this mission and each was determined to do his or her duty to the nth degree. Little did any of them suspect how high that nth degree would be.
There were some understandable jitters then, amongst this small platoon of waiting soldiers. They were pale and exhausted from the journey. They’d travelled in cramped, poor conditions. The smell of the diesel engine sickened them and many were jammed up uncomfortably against an enormous box, the only discernable letters of which were “KEL”. Colin dreamed on…
He was falling and falling until, with a soft plop, he landed on a vast brown plain. The grass around him was sere and coarse but it had cushioned his fall well enough. He felt a movement under his feet and froze.
A deep, disembodied voice boomed “Crumbs! It fell on Chops, The Dawg!”.
This time the lurch was unmistakable and it’s force threw Colin back into a soft copse. A quick check over his body, as he’d been taught, told Colin he had sustained no injuries but he didn’t know who had spoken or who “The Dawg” was and he wasn’t in a hurry to find out.
But what now? Things were changing again, in the way dreams do. In an instant he found himself slung high into the air and slammed down hard, onto on a cold white surface with a glaring fluorescent light overhead shining in his eyes and dazzling him.
“‘Ave you prepared it yet?”, came a voice, this time female and nerve-gratingly nasal.
“Close” said the booming voice. “It won’t be long now. The master will be satisfied this time, I’m sure”.
“Good, that last lot we sent up was a bit pasty-coloured. Didn’t like the look of ‘em, meself. There’s no wonder it displeased ‘im. Look, I’ll give you a hand, there’s only one left”.
Again Colin felt himself swing high, higher and then with a sickening crunch he was slammed face-down on some sort of a metal rack. The rack felt like it was on fire. Colin tried to recoil from the blistering bars but, almost immediately, he felt the scorch on his back; a searing heat from somewhere above was beating down on him and he began to smell the unmistakeable odor of burning flesh. His own.
“Genevieve!”, he yelled, as the pain screamed through his back and shoulders.
“Colin! Colin!” he thought he heard her cry.
Then louder, more urgently, “COLIN! COLIN! AAAAAAGH!”
He awoke, sweating and shaken as he looked around. Genevieve had gone, but the others were lying a short way away, apparantly still fast asleep. He shook his shoulders and smiled at his foolishness. For a moment there he could have sworn he was a … no it was just too ridiculous. Where do these dreams come from? he wondered.
Colin didn’t notice the gigantic, hairy hand as it came from behind him, and he was still smiling at his ludicrous dream when he heard The Master say, “Now that’s what I call a proper toast soldier! Pass the paper, darling, there’s a dear.”
Nobody heard Colin scream. Back on the plate, the others were just beginning to awaken and stir. The last thought he had in this life, as he was thrust into the dark, putrid mouth of The Master was, “Genevieve. Of course: French toast.”
******
For non-British people – toast soldiers are a nursery-food breakfast staple in houses with either small children, old people or students in them. A piece of buttered toast is cut into 4 strips or “soldiers” and then they are often dipped into a soft-boiled egg. We British use them as devices with which to paste up our wallpaper. Of course we don’t. We eat them. The British Empire was won on such breakfasts of champions. And then lost again, when we began the practise of smearing axle-grease or “Marmite” on our morning toast.
There is a lesson in this for Americans: stick to cornflakes. The day you start getting comfortable and lazy with your so-called “Pop-Tarts” and your Krispy Kreme WhatHaveYous is the day when your empire will also begin to crumble.
Be great again, America! Rediscover your core breakfast beliefs set down by the great breakfast giants, Kellogg, Quaker and the peerless Post! Don’t go the sugary, mass-produced junk-food route – that way lies only Metabolic Syndrome, diabetes and an inability to compete globally because you’re hungry again by mid-morning.
Eat an egg and soldiers in the morning, floss well, and you’ll be ready for anything the Chinese can throw at you!
(PAID FOR BY THE EGG AND BREAD MARKETING BOARD OF AMERICA.)
June 23rd, 2006 at 7:47 am
Sage advice Sam.
Personally I never break the fast with anything other than a cigarette, a swig of whiskey and yesterday’s regrets.
June 23rd, 2006 at 1:49 pm
The perfect breakfast (other than Latigo’s) is two eggs, sunny side up, on a piece of toast. Bacon on the side.
Cheers.
June 23rd, 2006 at 8:56 pm
Porridge flavoured with cinnamon and orange blossom honey.
Hope I don’t have nightmares.
June 24th, 2006 at 9:45 am
Now that’s my kind of story, Sam. I’m off to send a platoon of the little blighters on a suicide mission down my gullet.
June 24th, 2006 at 1:28 pm
Soft-boiled eggs?!?
Sounds like a soggy french toast stick.
Now, eggs sunny-side-up, burned potatoes and tobasco sauce, that’s a breakfast.
And no anthropomorphic homocidia involved.
June 24th, 2006 at 2:02 pm
Latigo, but cold yesterday’s regrets taste much better than today’s, don’t you think? They gather deeper flavours overnight in the fridge and you can make a meal out of them without having to cook up a whole other bunch of fresh regrets that day.
Randall, I’ve always thought of sunny-side up as runny-side up. I’m usually an optimist, but I can’t help thinking every egg I meet has a latent desire to infect me with salmonella. I blame Edwina Curry for that. (COMMENT NOT PAID FOR BY THE EGG MARKETING BOARD – PENDING LITIGATION FOR BREACH OF CONTRACT)
Pat, that sounds delicious. My girls are big porridge fans and I put raisins in while it’s cooking so that they swell up and pop nice and sweetly in their mouths.
Foot Eater, thank-you but I bow at the nibbled feet of the master of the macabre twist-in-the-tale ending. Merely a practice outing in the genre for me.
SafeT, your preferred breakfast option sounds to me like the perfect indigestion storm, scheduled to break at around 10am. Having said that, I like kippers and scrambled eggs when I’m breakfasting at Scottish B&Bs.
June 24th, 2006 at 6:19 pm
I’m all about the Belgian Waffles, personally. My thighs will attest to it. Each of them. Individually. But they do speak for one another as a whole.
June 24th, 2006 at 7:13 pm
Mom 101, my thighs will barely speak to each other. It’s an old dispute. Something one of them said to the other when they were sensitive adolescent thighs. I’ve pleaded with them to let thigh-gones be thigh-gones but they keep calling each other names and continue in this ridiculous thigh-war:
“Oooh! She shaves my over the knee bit more carefully than your’s. She obviously likes me better. Thigh owners always have favourites you know.”
They’re pathetic.
June 24th, 2006 at 9:54 pm
We don’t favour eggs in my neck of the woods. It would be humiliating for a gorilla to eat something from a chicken’s cha-cha. But I don’t see anything wrong with doughy-white things.
June 24th, 2006 at 10:34 pm
Brilliant! I am a bit confused, however, about one thing: Do the British acknowledge that the toast soldiers are of the “French” persuasion? Does that, perhaps, make it easier to justify their consumption perhaps? Also, if you don’t mind, why is French Toast referred to as toast at all? It’s usually not the least bit toasty, in fact it’s quite limp for the most part. Ah the questions that boggle the mind.
June 24th, 2006 at 10:37 pm
just one clarification…
In sentence three of the post above, a very poor job of editing resulted in the awkward presence of the word “perhaps” twice. Below is the sentence as it was intended:
Does that, perhaps, make it easier to justify their consumption?
I hate it when that happens…appropriate measures will be taken.
June 25th, 2006 at 6:16 am
poor Colin
June 25th, 2006 at 12:50 pm
Living in Belgium, I should support Mom101 in the waffle stakes, but the best ones have to be from a van on the street and there’s never one outside my house early in the morning. They are however sublime on a freezing Saturday afternoon in January when shopping fatigue sets in.
Wonderful story – can we have one about Sid the sardine next?
June 25th, 2006 at 2:00 pm
Toast Soldiers and soft-boiled egg is a real comfort food. When life has just about reached rock-bottom, my wife can still pull me back from the edge with boiled egg and soldiers
June 26th, 2006 at 2:15 am
Great story…
A good creamy cup of latte with eggs benedict… that always sets the world right…
But alas… my dream would be for it to be made for me…
alas… I live in a fantasy world…
June 26th, 2006 at 6:09 pm
GB, can’t argue with you about the eggs. Eating eggs is an abominable habit that I love.
Joel, you’re right. French soldiers WERE limper in the olden days. It couldn’t be truer. We British have known that for some time.
jr, I confess, I wept for Colin too. Thanks for stopping by!
Daphne, pleased to make your aquaintance! I’m not normally a waffle-eater but warm ones from a van in the rain in an old European city is a lovely romantic thought, in the same way as New York cheesecake in New York and jambalaya is New Orleans are romantically evocative. I have a hankering for a waffle now.
Kim, Heinz Cream of Tomato can also bring people back from the brink. And mince and potatoes with white pepper. And liquorice. When I say people, I mean me. Some people are very odd and like marzipan, fro crying out loud.
Pendullum, you’re right. Everything tastes better when somebody else, preferably one’s granny, makes it. Welcome!
June 28th, 2006 at 1:41 pm
…not entirely sure what a kipper is. Is that like a flowe rbud or some shellfish fing?