A Toast to Toast

A Toast to Toast

Breadthren and Sisterthren, the time has come on this auspicious date - the second rising of the dough, to share the Great Toastmaker's Plan, I have been granted the glorious honour of revealing the truth to the world.  No longer shall we meet in secret, no longer shall we be hounded by unbelievers for our faith, today we shall shed the true light upon humankind and bring peace and harmony to all forever.  From the richest to the very poorest, no matter the gender, orientation, the nationality, the religion, the colour, the political beliefs, we are all united under the Great Toastmaker as one in our common love of baked flour products and their derivatives.
  Think about it... There is no human alive untouched by our brilliant scheme, each and every one of us eats baked flour products in one way or another.  Did you think it was pure chance that in every village, town and city around the world there is a bakery of some kind?  Did you think bread figures so importantly in religion by happenstance?  You have all been ensnared in the floury web and share with us the marvels of bread, we are legion, we are everywhere, but we are not evil creatures, we have struggled for millenia to free humankind from the shackles of bondage and unite each other through love and reason.
  I am a Leavened Breadthren, amongst the highest in the order, I have been elevated to this status due to my untiring scientific research into the ultimate truth.  You may have noticed in many places company logos which bear an uncanny resemblance to a pair of rolling pins in the shape of an arrowhead with a flour shaker at a jaunty angle underneath them, and a pinafore shape underneath like a scroll with some Latin motto or other – this is no coincidence, as I said, we are everywhere.  Have you ever felt some-one shake your hand as though they were kneading dough?  If so you have been fortunate enough to meet one of my Breadthren or Sisterthren.
  There have been many malicious rumours as to our origins, our trajectory, our actions, and our objectives.  Firstly, I must say, there is unfortunately always a bad apple or two in every barrel, the source of our ill-fame; in the main we dedicate ourselves to serving the Great Toastmaker through charitable acts and helping others, as is its will.  Before the advent of recorded history, a lady saw the truth when she put ground grain to hot stone by the fireside, she is our mentor and inspiration.  Through the ages we have confected all manner of breadlike foods for the joy and enlightenment of humankind, endlessly reinventing baked goods.
  In the early eighteenth century there was a terrible schism in our faith when two master bakers competed for the role of Grandmaster Breadthren, where one insisted that scones be included in the teachings, but this was not the true doctrine, and so they broke off into their own faith – the Cakists; 'though we differ in approach to the philosophy, we live in harmony, as the Toastmaker desires and wills, they promote peace, love and unity through cakes and pastries while we do the same through strictly breadlike goods.  Bread is love.
  In my quest to discover the ultimate truth I became obsessed with creating a time machine in order to be able to go back in time and meet the Floury Lady of Our Discovery.  It consumed me, endless inventions, endless failures, but with time I got there – Oh yes, the stories of time machines are no myth, they are as real as the piece of hot, buttered toast in your hand now.  I am a wise scientist, I use guinea pigs before putting myself at risk.  In fact, I am still surprised how gullible some can be; I would offer wrongdoers the opportunity to travel wherever they wanted in time for the modest fee of five hundred thousand monetary units, to fund my experiments, and qualm any doubts they had by saying I needed to be here in order to bring them back should the hand-held device they took with them not work.
  By the hundredth or so experiment finally one of them came back alive and unharmed.  I cautiously tested it on another thirty or so subjects to make sure it was reliable, and then couldn't wait to finally be able to return in time to discover the truth, whose quest had been my life's work.  I set the controls for a distant date in time, flashed through the wormhole, and found myself before a cave with some creatures who looked like unkempt humans in rabbit skins making flint arrows, sharpening wooden spears and curing them at a fire, skinning a mammoth, a little boy was doodling on the walls of the cave, and there she was: a lady with wild hair and a bearskin bikini (like in films I've seen), around her neck was a necklace of sorts made of snail shells and little bones, and she was crushing grain between two stones.  I stood in awe, there at the very incipience of the faith and love which unites us all.  When she had finished grinding the grass seed, she spat into it several times, rolled it into little flatcakes and lovingly lay them on the hot stones around the fire.  I have never felt such a rush of joy and truth in my life, I stood mouth agape, taking photos, and trying to jot it all down in my little, trusty notebook.
  As she tenderly turned the flatcakes over, I knew I had to make contact with her, even just to touch the bearskin footwear she sported, and longed to get a taste of those divine breadlike things.  I slowly and cautiously walked towards the group of hominids from behind the tree I had been hiding behind, holding up the picture of a loaf of bread I had brought for this occasion in order to show I was a friend who came in peace, to make contact with the Floury Lady of Our Discovery.  As I got closer, to within a few metres, she looked up, as did a pair of men who'd been flint knapping, and they began to shriek wildly, gesticulating in the most worrisome fashion.  One of the men threw a rock at me, another a burning piece of wood, she threw a flatcake at me, which I hurriedly picked up and still cherish to this day, they began to chase me, I ran and pressed the button to return to the present, but not before taking a blurry last photo of the flatcakes cooking.
  Here it is, on this grand day for all humankind, the proof, the flatcake.  Breadthren, Sisterthren, non-believers, lay down your arms, relinquish these absurd hatreds, free the subjegated from the shackles of breadlessness and misery, come glory in the light and warmth of the campfire we are all part and parcel of, we are all one, myriad breadlike product lovers united under the Great Toastmaker, our beautiful diversity is our unity not our division.  Let's make a toast to toast and begin a better day for all.