Cottaging Conspiracy

Cadmore End, Buckinghamshire.

This morning I went to purchase a loaf of bread from the bakery in nearby Lane End. While perusing the merchandise, my eyes happened to alight upon a curiosity on the bottom shelf billed as a “cottage loaf”. When interrogated on the matter, the baker explained that it's so called because it resembles a cottage. “Like fuck it does!” I replied, cuffing him, sharply, round the head. “How many circular two-storey, doorless and windowless cottages have you ever seen?” Then I beat him up some more until he retreated, whimpering, to the comparative safety of his bread ovens.

Aesthetics aside (the fact of the matter is, the thing more closely resembles a big, inverted mushroom or one of those primitive Earth Mothers than anything else), my baker is guilty of flagrant profiteering. This is because a “cottage loaf” is priced at £1.90. However, a conventional loaf, composed – as far as I can tell – of exactly the same amount of dough, costs just £1.50. Nevertheless, people are obviously willing to pay the difference. Why?

Because people are stupid cunts, that’s why. I’ll bet if the baker started up-ending baguettes and describing them as “high-rise development loaves”, and then pricing them at £2 apiece, those same stupid cunts would buy them in droves, as well. Indeed, he could probably sell breadcrumbs for a tidy profit, too, if, instead, he called them a “Gaza police headquarters post-Israeli bombing loaf”. Or a single slice of bread, maybe, advertised as a “current value of your pension following depreciation due to credit crunch loaf.”

I blame the Christian Church for initiating these doughy deceptions. After all, for thousands of years they’ve been able to get away with calling a tiny, circular wafer of unleavened bread not, “a slice of Christ” or even “a tasting menu of Christ”, but a full-blown “body of Christ.” And people have lapped it up, uncomplainingly, without a single, dissenting “Is that it?” in recorded history.

Anyway, this afternoon I’m going to go round to the deli to buy some “cottage cheese”. If it doesn’t have doors and windows and at least one mouse tenant, there’s going to be some fucking serious trouble. You do not want to mess with me, I can assure you.

FUCK WITH ME AND YOU FUCK WITH THE BEST.