When I was 17, my mates and I made a man out of bread. This was and remains the most astoundingly funny thing that has ever happened to me. The late-night walk to the supermarket. The raiding of the stale discounted bread shelf. A conveyor belt full of cobs, baguettes, a tiger-loaf ribcage, a big round sourdough head. The unfurling of a single coathanger to use as connective tissue. And then, finally, the unnecessarily seductive pose we left the bread man in on a nearby bench: I was breathless with laughter. In the afternoon, when we finally woke up, all traces of the bread man were gone, which doubled me up all over again.
In hindsight I realise it wasn’t that funny, it just happened while my body was flushed with hormones and every possible emotion – joy, despair – was only felt at the absolute maximum range of my interior spectrum. But that does not stop me thinking fondly about the eight straight hours I spent chuckling about it at the time. He had iced fingers for trainers!
