Midlife guide to...

bread stapling

Have you seen what vandals have done to the village postbox now? There’s something unsightly stuck to the side of it… You’re not going to like it: it’s a slice of white bread. Really? What on earth…? That is what residents of Stewkley, near Aylesbury, have been wondering ever since signs, postboxes and noticeboards in their Buckinghamshire village came under attack last week by someone with a few spare slices of Mother’s Pride. Except this slice appears stuck on with gaffer tape. Are you sure “bread stapling” isn’t a figment of your imagination? Well, there’s a Reddit group where 150,000 subscribers share pictures of their doughy shenanigans. But to what end? Is it a new means of territory-marking by local gangs? That’s one theory doing the rounds on the internet, what with Nike Air trainers proving too expensive these days for drug dealers to just leave dangling from telegraph wires… Oh, that old urban myth… You’re right. Given this is happening in the Home Counties, it’s more likely to be a Lynda Snell-type do-gooder with a makeshift method to feed malnourished birds during the wet winter months. That’s the very yeast they could do.