More Musings From Her Majesty's Realm

In yesterday’s entry I implied that I, along with my fellow countrymen, cannot or will not take Britain seriously. This was somewhat dishonest on my part. It’s undoubtedly true that the rest of America remains defiantly apathetic to the British people and their way of life, but I myself have been an avowed anglophile for well over a decade, having greatly enjoyed my trips overseas in spite of the rain, the mad cow disease, and the horsey transvestites. My most recent visit to the UK was about 7 years ago when my parents took me to Yorkshire. While there, I laid eyes on something so strange, so improbable, I have yet to wrap my brain around it: full English breakfast in a can.

All of our previous voyages to the UK had centered around London, where a car would have been little more than a hindrance. This time, however, the plan was to set up base camp in York, and from there to take daytrips to surrounding areas. It was thusly determined that a vehicle would come in handy.

For an American, a car journey in England consists of long periods of boredom punctuated by moments of sheer terror. It doesn’t help that the whole of Yorkshire smells like shit. The primary problem with driving in Britain is obviously their road dyslexia. The secondary problem is that they have no qualms about making their two-way streets wide enough for only one car. They only exacerbate the threat of a head-on collision by erecting quaint stone walls along either side of every country lane, ensuring that no one can pull off the road and into safety.

Terror notwithstanding, in Britain the ordinary trappings of car travel remain. On one of our daytrips, we stopped for gas somewhere outside of York, giving us a fantastic opportunity to stretch our legs and get a good whiff of poop. While my parents got down to the business of filling up the tank, I wandered into the little gas station convenience store to examine their edible wares.

I must say that trolling supermarkets abroad is one of life’s great pleasures, and probably the single best way to come to grips with a country and its people. I thought my previous trips to Tesco and Asda and Sainsbury’s had adequately prepared me for the eccentricities of the British diet, but I was wrong. Really, once you get down to it, British supermarkets are disappointingly comparable to their American counterparts. Sure, they have the audacity to refer to frozen meat nuggets as “faggots,” but the basics are the same – fruits, vegetables, milk, bread, etc.

Not so British convenience stores. They must sell the requisite soft drinks and salty snacks and candy bars, but I really couldn’t say for sure. In my memory, this little store’s shelves were empty, except for a single innocuous-looking can shrouded in a strange and beautiful light. Upon closer inspection, I was positively floored to discover that this can advertised itself as containing a full English breakfast.

The English value breakfast because their other meals are so universally foul, and they consider the full English to be the absolute pinnacle of breakfast treats. Ingredients vary based on personal preference as well as region, but a full English generally consists of bacon, sausage, eggs, fried bread, mushrooms, a grilled tomato, and beans. All this in a can. It blew my mind.

I still wonder about the bread. I get the rest of it. Let me rephrase that. I don’t get why this product exists or why anyone would consume it, but I get that pork products, eggs, and vegetables mixed with beans would form a thoroughly unappealing brown mush whose component parts have been compacted out of all recognition and that this mush could be suitably preserved in a can. The mystery of the bread, however, lives on. My best guess: croutons.

The mystery lives on because we left that gas station empty-handed. I did submit to my parents that it would be a grave mistake to drive off without a specimen, but one of them dismissed my suggestion as absurd. Today, burning with a curiosity no less intense than mine, neither mother nor father wishes to admit guilt. Sadly, lacking the funds necessary to return to England I have little choice but to move on, though I continue to wonder what might have been…