DOING MY BIT

 I'm concerned that posting on this blogging community is becoming banal and, in some instances, frivolous. It's time that some real issues were identified and commented on.

Today I went to town and bought some hardware items (an exciting post on the reasons why will come later) and, while there I called into not one, but three lunch bars in search of something that I haven't seen for quite some time.

I had a craving for a croquette.

No. not this

Definitely not him

Kind of like this but not as fancy

For many years, when buying lunch at 'sandwich bars' the good old potato croquette was a stand-by if the other offerings weren't appealing. Usually there was nothing that the proprietors could muck up because the recipe was pretty basic - potato (grated or mashed, mixed with cheese, ham or fish, shaped into an oblong, coated with breadcrumbs and deep fried). Easy peasy. Simple but delicious.

In recent years these have been hard to find. There may be a few reasons for this:

• They have fallen out of popularity.
• Younger people buy other things
• The standardisation of 'Vietnamese-type' owned bakeries hasn't included the croquette as a staple.

I prefer the last one. The 'standard fare' of the average sandwich shop nowadays is  just that - standard. The offerings are a bit boring and don't vary much from one place to another. It gets to be a complete waste of time to travel from one to another and another of you are looking for, for example a cream horn, a Sally Lunn bun or, in my case a potato croquette (fish, ham or cheese or any combination).

My cravings went unsatiated. I bought a sausage roll instead. Admittedly the sausage roll was good and, once bitten into (uninvited), The Old Girl concurred. I worry though that the good old sausage roll might disappear as well. Heavens above! What will commercial cleaners and others still in the workforce without access to fancy staff cafeterias or expense accounts do?