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This would be accompanied by a caption about food shortages in the Soviet Union, highlighting how bad life was under communist rule.
More recently, the media has been inundated with pictures of long queues outside a bakery in the New Town. But there is no story about bread shortages in Stockbridge to follow.
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Hide AdAlmost everyone in Edinburgh will have heard of Lannan Bakery by now. You have to be living on another planet or the darker reaches of West Lothian, to not be aware of the existence of this internet sensation.
People stand for hours outside the shop on Hamilton Place well before its 8am opening time. Why? Your guess is as good as mine.
On Tuesday morning, I was walking past the line that stretched back from the corner of Saxe Coburg Street and wondering what draws people there.
In Edinburgh as a whole and Stockbridge in particular, there is hardly a shortage of expensive bakeries. Yet this shop seemingly draws customers from across the world who are willing to queue outside for as long as half an hour.
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Hide AdThe bizarre thing is that there are plenty other places selling cakes nearby.
This is similar to Mary’s Milk Bar on the Grassmarket. Tourists wait for ages outside the shop to buy an ice cream, rather than cross the road to get a cone from a place that isn’t on Instagram.
The bakery has become such a success that it’s featured on BBC News. They interviewed a woman from Kentucky and a student from China who had waited to buy cakes from the shop. Coming from Beijing to get an eclair is quite some carbon footprint.
However, it appears that their queue is now getting so out-of-hand that they have had to employ a “warden” to keep matters under control.
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Hide AdA bouncer at a posh cake-shop at morning rush hour in one of the city’s most effete neighbourhoods ? What is the world coming to ? Surely trouble can’t be kicking off at that time of day or are people so desperate to get the last strawberry tart that a massive bun fight ensues?
It seems local parents have been complaining that the queue is taking up so much of the pavement that their children have been forced off the kerb on their walk to school.
And let’s face it, a bunch of American tourists queueing outside a cake shop is going to take up a whole load of room. It’s probably visible from outer space.
When I was a kid in primary school, we were all drilled in road safety. Stop on the pavement before crossing. Look left, look right, look left again. If there is no traffic, then it’s safe to cross.
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Hide AdThere was never any mention of avoiding hungry tourists outside patisseries. These are the perils our children have to face in the modern world.
Thanks to Instagram, the world now knows about Lannan Bakery. I wonder if pictures of their queue have been published by the media in Russia. If so, I wonder what the captions will read.
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