FIRST WORLD PROBLEMS: The Curse of the Pub Lunch

The Ploughman's Lunch: Note poncy wooden serving platter

FIRST WORLD PROBLEMS: The Curse of the Pub Lunch

We trecked across the heath that Sunday afternoon, the sun on our backs, to our local. Two pints of your finest, mein host, and a glance at the bar menu.

I ordered the ploughman's, and minded not that it arrived on a wooden platter, the true sign that a food ponce is in charge of the kitchen. At least – one thought – it means that I would get a half-decent ploughman's lunch with locally sourced ingredients.

HOW WRONG I WAS.

The ham and the pork pie, the chutney, the salad, the pickled onions, the apple, the hearty serving of bread – I could fault none of these.

But when it came to the most important ingredient of them all, where I expected a flavourful taste explosion, I instead got two thin, slightly sweaty slices of medium cheddar. They might as well have been a wafer of processed cheese to go on top of a burger.

I WAS OUTRAGED.

So outraged, in fact, that we bought another round of drinks, imbibed them at our leisure, bid the barman a fond farewell, AND LEFT.

By rights, I could have stormed into the kitchen and burned razed the place to the ground by setting fire to their poncy wooden serving platters and not a jury in the land would convict me, but that is not the way we do things in Britain.

Add this to the disappointing ploughman's I recently ate at a National Trust café (over which we registered our displeasure by purchasing several items in the shop and strolling round a country house and grounds FOR SEVERAL HOURS), I doubt if I will ever eat an acceptable on in this country ever again.

Britain, you've got to pot. SORT OUT YOUR PLOUGHMAN'S LUNCHES.