My favorite roadside cafe

The homogenisation of the high street started with the chain stores moving in and a growing concern that one high street looked much the same as another.  The downside to this was that high streets lost their individuality, the upside was that shoppers could be confident that on a Saturday, they could buy their pick and mix, purchase an LP, rent a VHS or Betamax video, and fail to find the right sized garment in M&S, no matter where they were.
The health of the high street means that comment has turned from condemnation to concern, and the same chain stores that were once criticised are now described as flagships of the high street.  At least you can still be assured that M&S is unlikely to have the right sized trouser for you, as they continue to adhere to the winning business model of making sure their garment rails are fully stocked with unusual sizes and fail to acknowledge entirely the effect that their food range has had on the collective waistline of their clothing customers.
The new uniting factor on the high street is food and beverage outlets.  Where it was once the occasional golden arch or sinister looking bearded fella with a thing about fowls, now it’s coffee galore.  With just so many coffee shops at least the mystery of just why there are so many fucking discarded coffee cups littering the nation is hardly a three piper.
Our food and drink has been homogenised in our town centres, because if you go to a well known pizza place in any town centre you can be reasonably sure you are going to get what you expect when you order, because it’s probably all made and packaged up in an industrial food prep place in Dudley and shipped by artic to the franchise you are in, where it is effectively reheated and presented with a flourish by a local surly teen.
That’s why, if you want individuality, you have to go out of town.  And I don’t mean some gastropub in the Dales where they raise and then bludgeon to death their own goats, I mean roadside cafes.
I love roadside cafes.
My favourite is situated in a quiet layby on an A road not far from a busy motorway junction.  The layby has a screen of trees separating it from the road, but the noise and the pollution are still a feature of the layby.  The café itself is a converted caravan which, like the cook’s apron, probably started life as white.  A union flag flies from an improvised flagpole atop the caravan.
The menu is varied; sausage sandwich or bacon sandwich.  Add egg if you an epicurean or eggycurious.  The bread is white, of a sort not available outside the layby café catering trade.  It transfers the grease from the filling to the fingers, but never loses its consistency, something of a molecular miracle.
If it’s a refreshing drink you require, then you are in luck.  You can have a cold can, not just a can you understand, but a cold can.  You can have tea, or coffee.  Both are served in Styrofoam cups of the sort that were actually banned in 1997 and are not so much non-biodegradable as possessing a half-life.
Sugar if available from a bowl on a ledge.  You can consider the absence of sachets as a nod to the environment if you like, and you can also speculate that the sugar encrusted teaspoon that rests in the bowl is the roadside café equivalent of those lolly type things used to sweeten beverages in hipster joints.  You’re wrong.
The shelf is also where the condiments are housed, and you can tell that this is a classy joint because instead of generic red and brown sauce bottled containing God-knows-what, these bottles are branded, ‘Daddies’.  Possibly like premium brand vodkas in pubs the contents may not match the label, but it’s the presentation that counts.
There is mismatched patio furniture to dine on, but customers prefer to stand, having been sitting all day probably.  There are restroom facilities, just behind that ailing shrub.
You may smoke.
And, naturally, no Michelin stars, two Michelin tyres.