‘No worst, there is none.’
That’s the opening of Gerard Manley Hopkins' sonnet, referring to depression, spiritual
crisis, weltschmerz, and so on.
But it’s a phrase I often think of while eating a sub-standard sandwich. By which I mean I’d never say ‘This is the worst sandwich ever’ because you know there’s always likely to be a worse one just around the corner.
I was in the tearoom at the Beth Chatto Gardens in Elmstead, Essex – as a matter of fact Hopkins was an Essex lad too, born in Statford when it was still in the county.
After a circuit of the Chatto grounds we headed for the tea room and my eye fell on an egg mayonnaise sandwich, which I bought. It was only when I got to the table, inside the artisanal polytunnel, that I noticed the bread was gluten free.
I'm no bigot and this didn’t bother me until I tasted it, at which point it bothered me a lot. The 'bread' was like a cross between cotton wool and dry cardboard, insubstantial yet thoroughly unpleasant. Why would anybody make a thing like this and call it bread? It wasn’t fooling anybody.
If you like bread you’re not going to like 'gluten-free bread' just as if you like alcohol you’re not going to like 'alcohol-free gin.' Making some gluten-free substance that scarcely resembles bread at all, is no solution.
‘My cries heave, herds-long’ as Gerard said.
The egg mayonnaise inside was perfectly fine though, so the sandwich could have been a lot worse.
