Day 400

Cheese and pickle. Brown bread. The shop on the corner of the road my office is on, run by a couple called Sunil and Grace. I've had it every working day since the second Monday in January last year. Four hundred, as of today. Grace has been keeping count, which I only found out about at three hundred, when there was a small cake. People find this upsetting. Not Sunil and Grace. Other people. My colleagues, mainly. "Don't you get bored?" No. "Don't you want something else?" Not at lunch. "What if they close?" I'll deal with that when it happens, and I'll probably be sad, and I'll find another sandwich. I didn't set out to do it. Nobody sets out to do something four hundred times. You just do it once, and it's fine, and you do it again because it was fine, and at some point around thirty you realise it's become a thing, and you have a choice, which is to stop because it's become a thing or to keep going because it's become a thing. I kept going. Here's what I've noticed. The sandwich has been the same. Everything else hasn't. In four hundred days I've been promoted, been dumped, been to two funerals, moved flat, started running and stopped running and started again. I've had days where I've stood in the queue with my eyes stinging and days I've been so happy I've said something stupid to Sunil about the weather. And through all of it, at 12:40, cheese and pickle, brown bread, three pounds twenty, now three pounds sixty. It's not about the sandwich. I know that. It's the one thing in the day I don't have to decide. Everything else needs deciding. Not this. Sunil once asked if I'd like it toasted, as a treat, and I said no, and he nodded like I'd passed something. Grace asked me on day 400, while she was wrapping it, what I was going to do at 500. I said I hadn't thought about it. She said "we'll do a bigger cake." Sunil said "you should try the tuna." I said I'll think about it. I won't. Grace has already worked out that 500 falls on a Tuesday in February. She's written it on the calendar behind the till.