It’s the sandwich people (1 person) have been asking for, and it’s been hard to find because Greggs seem to sell out of everything by 11.58am every day. But on Friday night, I walked past Greggs at about 6pm and what did I see? Not one, but two Christmas sandwiches! So I got one and took it home for later. I didn’t fancy it for dinner on Friday (I’m not an animal) so put it in the fridge. On Saturday I had to head out for boat trip and didn’t get a chance to eat it, and then on Sunday, I was heading out all day again with my family and didn’t really have time to eat it. So, I had it for breakfast on Sunday (I am an animal).

Now, I know what you are thinking. The Monday blog post was about Saturday, and the Tuesday blog post is about Friday night and Sunday morning? None of this makes sense. How are we supposed to follow this?! He died earlier, how is he back now? And why are films always so dark now? You can’t see anything. It’s a non-linear narrative, dad. It requires a slight bit of work from you but not much. Go back to sleep.

Turkey breast, sweetcure bacon, pork, onion and sage stuffing and cranberry & port sauce with mixed salad leaves and mayonnaise in malted brown bread.

So, this is a letdown. Everything about this sandwich is bland. The stuffing doesn’t taste of much, the cranberry sauce is null and void. It just tastes like any old chicken and bacon sandwich you can get all year round. ‘Top of your Christmas lunch list’ the packaging boldly claims. Unlikely. Greggs came second in 2017, narrowly missing out on the top spot and I sang their praises. And now this. It’s not the worst, but it’s such a disappointment. It’s gone full-blown Arsenal.

Well I’m wanking working from home today and it’s pretty miserable outside but I had to go out to vote and there is a Tesco Express nearby, so that was everything sorted out in one cold wet walk. Did you vote? Did you mention you are voting on social media? Did you post a selfie by the polling station? Did you tell everyone how important it is to vote to make yourself look smart? Did you tell people which way to vote but made no mention of your party’s policies, only saying nasty things about the other party? Were your friends impressed? Did you get some likes? Do you feel special?

I’ll tell you what isn’t special – Christmas sandwiches aren’t special to Tesco. They have churned out the same sandwich for the past 4 years. This sandwich is the reason I tried vegan sandwiches for a change last year. But this is your fault. You wonder how we can save the high street, but I don’t care, let it burn. You don’t buy anything from independent shops, then we end up with the same shops everywhere, selling the same old shit in every high street and town in this shitty old country. And then you don’t buy anything from them anyway, you just shop online. I know how to save the high street and if you ever see me IRL (in real life, mum) I’ll tell you. In boring detail. But this is a light-hearted Christmas sandwich blog, this isn’t the time or place.

Turkey breast, chicken stock mayonnaise, pork sausage, cranberry sauce, sage and onion stuffing, beechwood smoked streaky bacon on malted bread.

Having said all that it’s still pretty good! Let’s have the same again next year so I don’t have to use my brain.

Oh hey, how’s it going? Did you miss me yesterday? Where was I? Oh, I had some Koshari for lunch. You’ve probably never heard of it. SMUUUUUUUUUUUUG FACE. I remember someone at uni saying “You’ve probably never heard of them” about Junior Senior when Move Your Feet came out. Imagine that, trying to be a smug hipster at an art college about a band with a terrible song that got to number 3 in the charts. And it really is a terrible song. Who would listen to that on their own? It’s one of those songs you only hear in public or on adverts, never something you sit and listen to. Dreadful.

I’m in Canary Wharf again today, but I didn’t have to be at the client until 11am which gave me time to duck into Costa before the hordes of coffee addict basic bitches swarm down from the towers. Except I got stuck in a queue of 2 people who’s Apple pay was getting declined and they were debating how they will pay and who will transfer money to whom. Jesus christ I hate coffee shops. They are somewhere else you would hear that dreadful song and people would say “oh I remember that song, I love that song” but they never listened to it once. Never just sat down, on the bed, telly and phone off and just listened.

D-d-don’t, don’t stop the beat
I c-c-c-can’t control my feet
P-p-p-people in the streets
C’mon, everybody, and move your feet

Don’t stop (Don’t stop), don’t stop the beat
I can’t stop (Can’t stop), can’t stop the beat
I won’t stop (Won’t stop), won’t stop the beat, and go!

I’d fucking hang myself.

Anyway into the sandwich…and it’s the official Brexit Christmas sandwich! Most of the ingredient lists I’ve read this year have the word British in them over and over again but only Costa have the balls to call their whole damn sandwich British. And make the most of it people, because next year we’ll be stuffing Trump’s chlorine-bleached turkeys down our throats for Christmas because Brussels shouldn’t be setting our expensive food hygiene standards when there is food that is produced so disgustingly it as to be bleached before it is fit for human consumption that we can import on the cheap. RULE BRITANNIA YOU FUCKS.

Turkey breast, pork, sage and onion stuffing and cranberry sauce with smoked bacon and mayonnaise on malted bread.

The bread is about an hour away from being stale. How have they achieved this? On the other hand, the contents are a bit mushy and heading towards being a paste. It still tastes alright, but Costa has really put in the bare minimum of effort here and churned out some old slop but you’ll buy it because you need to get a coffee and whilst you are there you may as well get your lunch, saves you going to two places and you’ve got to get back for that meeting anyway and you can eat it in the meeting because no one has lunch hours any more because they are socialist and oh what’s that song? I remember that. I loved that song. I couldn’t name the artist and it’s not on my phone or Spotify history but oh why has my card been declined. Shit I don’t enough money for this and on top of that it’s Christmas and how has it come to this? Why is this my life now? The future looked so bright.

See you tomorrow!

Well, I’m in Canary Wharf again and I decided today’s the day to got to Eat. So I went to Eat. And it is now Veggie Pret. Which I hadn’t noticed for around six months of being in Canary Wharf twice a week. I noticed the Veggie Pret when it opened, but never realised that it had replaced Eat. Is it just in Canary Wharf? Or have Eat gone bust? To be honest, I simply cannot be bothered to find out.

But this is all fine, I’m in Canary Wharf and there are thousands of food options. But not thousands of sandwich options. Sure, there are thousands of Prets but most of the other food places specialise in over-priced salads or other “healthy” options. There is Costa, but I genuinely hate going into coffee shops just for a sandwich and it was packed to cunting point with coffee arseholes. There is also Paul, but please see the previous point. And I haven’t seen a Starbucks but again see the Costa points. So, there I stood in Canary Wharf like a lost child unsure of what to do next. And then I remembered Boots.

Fun fact: if you go to the family planning section in the Boots at Canary Wharf, there are loads of vibrators on the shelf! I guess they help reduce pregnancies if you just spend the weekend strumming yourself whilst watching Ben Shepherd on Tipping Point. Pretty ironic that they stopped using ‘Here Come The Girls’ on their adverts and started stocking these. What an ad campaign that would’ve been!

The Boots in Canary Wharf is also one of the busiest shops in the whole world (I think, there hasn’t been a study on this to my knowledge) but the queue moves pretty quickly because everyone is only buying one sandwich, one box of Lemsip or a couple of vibrators, so problem solved and here we are.

Turkey breast with cranberry chutney, mayonnaise, pork sage and onion stuffing, smoke flavour sweet cured bacon and fried onions.

This is good! The bacon is very smoky (which we all know I love), the stuffing is great and there’s a nice little hit cranberry pulling it all together. I feel like all of the sandwiches are good this year. Maybe it was the year off turkey sandwiches, maybe it’s the fact there isn’t spinach in everything, or maybe it’s just the past six months of eating mainly food that isn’t mainly made of fat and salt, but I’m enjoying myself again.

Just a quick one today (matron). I’ve gotta get going to the Christmas party and I’m eating this ridiculously late.

I went to Greggs today but they had run because it was after 11.30, and then everything in Nero needing cooking and I didn’t have time so I ended up in Aldi. I didn’t even know they did sandwiches! There seems to be quite a difference between Canary Wharf (Waitrose, Pret) and Tooting (Lidl, Aldi). Let’s get on with it.

Turkey breast, pork, sage and onion stuffing, cranberry chutney, mayonnaise, smoked bacon and fried onion on malted bread.

This is good! For once you can taste the cranberry. Has the fact it is a chut-en-y made the difference? I don’t know. It’s pretty basic but hits all the right notes. Look at Aldi and Lidl jumping onto the blog and making a splash.

Right, I’m off to get drunk, byeeeeeee.

It’s Thursday! And you know what that means? It was Slimming World night last night. After eating a Christmas sandwich for lunch Monday to Wednesday, and drinking a ridiculous amount of booze on Friday and Saturday (not to mention drunken junk food), I figured I’d be putting on some weight this week. And to be honest, if I’m getting fat again from these sandwiches, the blog will be cancelled. So, braced for the worse, I got on the scales and…

-1.5lbs

Boom! The blog lives on. If I only have beer and sandwiches for the rest of the month, I’ll be fine. And don’t worry, I’ll keep you posted on my fluctuating weight as the month drags on. Anyway, Slimming World is next to Lidl and I was getting some shopping and lo and behold the sandwich gods shined upon me and they had some Christmas sandwiches! A first for the blog. Are you excited? I am! Let’s get this over with.

British turkey breast, British pork & onion sausage, British streaky bacon, British pork, sage & onion stuffing,  with caramelised onion & sage mayonnaise, cranberry sauce and fried onions on malted wheat bread.

Once again I have no idea how much this cost because it just got bundled in with the other shopping. Sometimes this blog just isn’t as professional as it should be. Anyway, go through the list of ingredients again. Is it important to you that all of the meat ingredients are British? Is that why you voted to leave and why the country is in a mess? Do you really like Boris or have you just backed yourself into a corner and can’t back down? But that’s not why we’re reading the ingredients again. There’s sausage in there! A bold move.

And I like it – this is a good sandwich. Big hits of sage and onion, the mayonnaise saves it from being dry like all of the other sandwiches so far, and that sausage just adds some extra meaty goodness. Sure it looks a bit grey, but I’m okay with that. My only gripe would be that you cannot taste that cranberry sauce at all but otherwise, this is high on the list. A fine debut for Lidl.

It’s the one you’re all waiting for (except the one person who has requested Greggs over Whatsapp).

I’m in Canary Wharf today, and they have a Veggie Pret. But before you get your Brexit voting knickers in a twist, fear not! There are 478,000 normal Prets here as well, so I’ve gone for their traditional favourite. And do you know what? I didn’t have one last year because I was trying the vegan stuff, and I didn’t have one the year before that because for some inexplicable reason I couldn’t find any (see posts from 2017 for more info – Ed). So the excitement is palpable. Except it isn’t really because I’m secretly writing this in a room full of clients and they have no idea I have been running this wretched blog on and off since 2012.

So without further ado – WILL YOU START THE FANS PLEASE?!

£3.95 – Thick slices of free range turkey with port & orange cranberry sauce, herby pork stuffing and baby spinach leaves. Finished with a dab of free range mayo and crispy onions

Turn the god-damned fans off! There’s stuffing and crispy onion everywhere! Yep, like a ghost of Christmas sandwiches past, the first thing that happened was that this motherfucker went everywhere when I opened it. There are crumbs on the client’s floor, mother!

It’s only 5p below that dreaded £4 threshold, but I am in Canary Wharf so if anyone can find one cheaper, write a comment below (and guys, don’t forget to like and subscribe). Although 50p of that did go to charity, I guess. You can’t really see the sticker in the photo I sneakily took in the middle of a meeting, but the writing on the box says “50p donated to help the homeless”. Why is “the” in italics? Is it a particular homeless? You know, that homeless. Or is it a bad translation like “Die Bart, Die”? Le homeless? My graphic design degree from the now-defunct Kent Institute of Art & Design finally comes to good use as I criticise sandwiches boxes to boost up my word count on this thing I do for free.

Back to the eating. The stuffing is very crumbly and dry. And there’s a lot of rubbery spinach buuuuuuuuuut…. it’s really good. Great flavours and big chunks of turkey, not like Sainbury’s wafer-thin slices of things yesterday. I’m glad I had a break from this one for a couple of years, it tastes great. Have Pret cheated their way to the top of the list so far simply because I haven’t had this sandwich for a few years? You bet baby, absence makes the heart grow fonder. And eating one of these sandwiches every day also makes the heart grow fatter. And weaker.