Smoked Toast and Simple Pleasure.

I wonder how many young people today have experienced the pleasure of toast made on a simple wire toasting fork over the embers of a coal fire. It was a common way of making it when I was a boy. Every home had a telescopic wire toasting fork because every home had a coal fire in the winter. The bread absorbs a little of the tar rising off the coals, you see, and gains an added level of flavour unattainable by any other means.

The last time I remember having such a treat was one winter morning when I was nineteen. A heavy blizzard had raged for much of the previous day and the snow was too deep to allow any prospect of going to work. A fire was burning in the living room of the little three-bedroom flat on the ground floor of a Victorian terraced house in which I was living with my partner. I knew that there was a small private bakery just around the corner, so I went out and fetched a newly baked loaf of bread. And then we cut several thick slices, toasted them over the embers, and spread them liberally with fresh butter.

I think of the large amounts of money people spend in search of largely manufactured and expensive pleasures. I think of the many different pleasures I’ve experienced in my own life. And I can honestly say that those thick slices of buttered toast made over a coal fire in a warm room on a cold morning are among the most memorable of all.