Blog post 1 December 5th 2025
Blog post 1 December 5th 2025
£9 for a loaf of bread…
A friend of ours rang me up last Saturday morning and asked if I’d like a loaf of bread. He was about to visit a famous bakery close to where we live. I said – yes please, how lovely and (of course) offered to pay. He gave the choice of olive bread or sourdough, as my partner is not a big fan of olives, the choice was easy. He delivered the most delicious warm half loaf to us – it was a long one, so he kept half for himself, and then informed me that it was £9 a loaf. £9 for a loaf of bread at the end of 2025.
All sorts of historical issues, problems, queries rose through my mind and became a minefield – setting off little explosions as they rose into my consciousness. I thought of the TED talk where Jonas Eliasson was contacted by a Russian civil servant to ask who controls the bread supply in London. I thought of famines and wars, the price of wheat in the current post Ukrainian harvest context, and remembered my friend Thomas B telling me a loaf of bread in Germany would soon rise to 9 Euros a loaf as we sat outside a café in Braunschweig. I wondered if bread is still a staple in the UK, I wondered how Lidl can offer a small loaf for 79p and who is eating what – what is the class division of bread, the socio economic stratification of dough… what (the heck) are the ingredients of the 79p bread compared to the £9 loaf?
Designer bread, and I’m afraid I use the word ‘designer’ disparagingly, might mean that someone can charge what they like for something that is exactly the same but in a different wrapper… and we’ve been here so many times before. Ben Elton wrote a scathing satire of ‘designerism’ in his amusing play;’Gasping’, where air becomes a consumer commodity with all the class stuff attached… and the normal people, who can’t afford the pure clear oxygenated air from the Himalayas are left dying for lack of breath on the streets. The predictions of the Frankfurt School made manifest. Are there still things money cannot buy? (I’m not convinced about love).
The bread was delicious. But toasted 79p bread with marmalade and butter is also delicious. Does this mean my palate is jaded, common, or that I simply don’t appreciate the finer things in life?? And I will not allow that particular curse of snobbery – the curse of shame, the curse of the pea under the mattress, to be inflicted upon me. You’ll remember that – the princess, whose refinement, breeding, class, is so elevated from the commoner that she can feel a pea through 100 piled up mattresses – yes, friend – you and I would not notice it. Let’s not pretend.
Ah so much more to be said about this. Can I live with the shame of not buying this bread? I certainly can. Can I live with the shame of enjoying my slice of the £9 loaf? Possibly not.
Until the next time, friends!
Addendum: I read this post aloud to the other half. He said: ‘Do(ugh)n’t do it’.
I may not read to him again…
References:
Eliasson, J: 2012 TEDxKTH 14th May (find it online, the link is too long to put here!)
Elton, B: 1998 Gasping Samuel French
The Frankfurt School: there’s a good introduction to this immensely important group of thinkers here: https://newhistories.sites.sheffield.ac.uk/volumes/2009-10/volume-1/issue-7-theory/the-frankfurt-school
Janet de Vigne: website launched 1st December 2025