Kein Brötchen

I found myself, today, to be in possession of all the trappings necessary to make a salami and salad roll, except for the bread roll.

We're running a little low on bread, at present, so my options basically consisted of digging some ancient bread out of the freezer for a sandwich, or going to a shop to purchase a roll. Since I found the idea of a “freshly baked” bread roll from a bakery quite appealing (much more so than the ancient bread option) I thought I would put an old plan into action.

At the end of my street, you see, there are a cluster of shops. I always thought these were the old fashioned, corner store type shops that you get in neighbourhoods that were built to the Old Pattern. The Old Pattern was developed back in the day when people only had one car per family, and they really only used it for important things like going to work, going to church, or going for a holiday. Most of the time kids rode bicycles and mothers walked - hence the old neighbourhoods all have shops centrally located in places which are in easy walking distance from most of the houses in the area. And they were all “every day living”, practical type stores: greengrocers, bakeries, butchers... These shops also were what you might call “open air” affairs. The shops themselves had doors and roofs, obviously, so they could be air-conditioned when the time came, but to get from one shop to another you had to go outside - out where the real air could invade your lungs and touch your skin. Shocking, I know.

There are many neighbourhoods where the shops were originally based on the Old Pattern, but they have since been subjected to the Interim Pattern. That is, the large supermarket chains found a shop with a position they liked, and basically “bought in”, necessitating a conversion from “open air” to “enclosed and air-conditioned”. If there happened to be an independent greengrocer, bakery or butcher in these shops to begin with, they might be able to hold on for a couple of years, but eventually they would either shut up entirely and leave or be replaced by chains who had the brand power to hold off against the supermarkets. The other shops in the area would find that such niceties as bakers, greengrocers and butchers weren't really making any money, so those services would leave, and then the shops would be left finding new stores for niche markets. Such stores never seem to last long. Now the shops within walking distance don't really cater to your “everyday living needs” (well, except for the hideously expensive convenience stores). Instead, you have to drive a car over to a supermarket for the weekly shop. Still, these supermarkets are in the neighbourhood - it's really only a five to ten minute drive, depending on traffic.

The Current Pattern involves neighbourhoods mass built in some kind of pre-fabricated design which never included corner shops to begin with. If you're lucky, some block of land within ten minutes' driving distance of your house has been set aside, and one day a supermarket chain will think the population is big enough to warrant putting an air-conditioned wonderland with a horrible, horrible car park on that land. Until that day, you have to drive at least twenty minutes or so to one of the big supermarkets for the weekly shop - where you are given a choice of supermarket chain or franchise for your bakery or butchery needs, but for all groceries (green or otherwise), it's just the supermarket.

Anyway, I know the shops at the end of my street have been sliding towards the Interim Pattern for some time. The butcher got out while I was still a child and the greengrocer closed up shop years ago - never to be replaced. But I always had some faith in the fact that we had a couple of bakeries. I have often bought pies, pastries or cakes from those bakeries. I have never really paid attention to the fact that they don't sell bread.

I did half remember that one of them never did - they always sold pies and sandwiches, but not bread. The other one, though, I'm sure used to sell bread. I could have sworn that when I used to walk up to that shop with my grandmother as a child, they had racks displaying bread and bread rolls. That is why I walked to that shop today to indulge my “Fresh bread roll from bakery” whim.

I can now tell you that, at the end of my street, there is a “bakery”, which doesn't sell bread, a pie shop, which doesn't sell bread and a cake shop, which doesn't sell bread. If you want a sausage roll, you're in the right neighbourhood. If you want a loaf of bread or a couple of bread rolls, you're plumb out of luck. I also noticed, for the first time, that when they put their new sign up the bakery (which has been there for a good thirty years) neglected to put the word “bakery” in its name. I guess that should have been a sign (pardon the pun) that their focus had changed.

A quick calculation in my head worked out that the two other bakeries in the area (at least one of which I happen to know actually does sell bread) would take at least ten minutes to walk there, making it too long for a round trip, given that I had only wanted to waste ten minutes on this excursion, and that time was already squandered. I could have ridden my bike to one of those bakeries in short time, but since I'd have to walk home to get my bike anyway...

So, yeah. No bread roll for lunch. Sad, really - on a number of levels.