Wednesday, the day before normality resumes.

Breakfast: 1 pint porridge, 6 oz bread
Dinner: 3 oz bread, 4 oz met, 8 oz veg
Supper: 6 oz bread, 1 pint tea


So it's back to bread then. Bread bread bread. Lovely bread.

Only joking, it's rubbish.

Today was a day of lasts. For instance, the last time I'll have to have a whole pint of bloody porridge first thing. I said it before and I'll say it again, it's not possible to ingest that amount of stuff at such an hour. The Porridge isn't a problem in itself, it's the bread. Milky oats and bread? No sir! No I say!

Lunch again, was the meat and veg combo, again, which was passable again. And lo, the tea and bread. For the last time, also, which is a relief.

I can see though why workhouses were, well, in a funny sense of the word, 'popular'. The diet (especially of the urban poor, and even more especially of the urban homeless poor) would have consisted almost solely of begged, stolen or borrowed food. The workhouses.org.uk site gives a good idea of the hand to mouth existence on offer (though the articles by the 'social explorers' of the time seem to comprise almost totally of the old 'cheeky but lovely cockney bootblack' type of noble poor. Who swears a lot). The food in the workhouse - poorly designed, tasteless, bland and soul crushing as it was - offered at least some guarantee of nourishment, and it's surprising how many vagrants actually rated the quality of the gruel at differing institutions.

It's a case now where I think (well, after yet more bread on the morrow), that I might appreciate food a bit more - not just for its existence, but for its variety and quantity as well. And for its lack of consistent quantities of wholemeal bread and gross slop in pints.