21 July 2012

Crackers

Some people are strange.  You could buy a lot of pan loaves instead.
Someone has paid £230 at auction for a 30-year-old piece of toast. Not just any old piece of toast, however – a piece of toast served to, but not eaten by, Prince Charles on the morning of his wedding to Diana Spencer in 1981. The provenance was impeccable.
What an extraordinary, moving bit of carbohydrate. The scene constructs itself: the young Prince, about to reach for his usual second piece of toast, but suddenly overcome with doubt; the toast, returned, untouched, puzzled over by the staff; and finally one says, "That toast, colleagues, is history. In that toast, we shall see this marriage unfold. I am keeping that, to sell it at a profit in decades to come." The age of the reliquary is not over. God knows what it would have fetched if the royal toast had been proffered to the sainted Diana herself, or if evidence of marital doubt were present in a single, uncommitted bite mark.
It will be mouldy by now.  Even with marmalade (which hides a lot of sins), it will be inedible ...

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