Is it just ME?

Or have we lost the sandwich plot?

THERE are occasions when only a sandwich will do. Cricket teas — white loaf and cucumber. Children’s parties — egg and cress. Picnics in the boot of the car when the sports field is under water — cheese, ham, pickle.

It is a mark of the Englishman that at the first sight of a National Trust oak leaf on a road sign he starts thinking of the sandwiches on the back seat. The bird watcher unfolds her camping stool and hankers after the rolls in the cool box.

Sandwiches, however, are an endangered species. In our hypochondria about wheat and the bogeyman gluten, we have given up our floured buns, our Hovis loaf, our French baguettes.

Once M&S and Pret a Manger could be counted on for prawn mayonnaise and tuna and sweetcorn sarnies. Now it’s beetroot falafel wraps and quinoa ‘power pots’.

Have you tried to eat a quinoa pot on a speeding train or on a bench with a view in a gale? The food bloggers photograph Kilner jars filled with ‘kelp noodles’, ‘rainbow slaw’ and ‘protein boost’ layers of lentils, beansprouts, avocado and pumpkin seeds.

But it’s no good lugging a full Kilner jar in a rucksack on a cliff walk. What you need are pitta pockets filled with hummus, tomatoes and roast chicken, wrapped in foil.

At my primary school, there was a joyous two-week stint every summer when the lunch room was given over to the senior school’s GCSE exams. Instead of the usual stews and minces, we had cheese sandwiches.

They came with a bag of crisps and fruit and you could make a very satisfactory cheese and apple and salt and vinegar crisp sandwich.

I miss proper sandwiches. The best sandwich I had last year was a roast beef and pickled onion bap from Hunters of Helmsley in Yorkshire, eaten on a bench by the war memorial. A cold day in April and it poured, but nothing sets you up like a roast beef sandwich.

Have you ever tried to eat a quinoa pot on a speeding train or windswept bench?