My father had a characteristic way of buttering his bread: he always did it the same way, never varied.
First he'd spread a spare amount of butter on a one-inch 'finger' down the right-hand outside edge, cut it off, eat it slowly, chewing thoughtfully; then spread another 'finger' on the right-hand edge, cut and eat that in the same way; and so on. I was fascinated ~ it was so different from my mother, who loved to celebrate the beginning of holidays and any other occasion that gave her the excuse she needed by spreading butter thickly on her breakfast toast: really an impressive amount of butter for one piece of toast!
Eventually I asked my father one quiet day why he spread his bread like that, and he smiled and told me it was a habit he developed as a child during World War I: at his boarding school there was severe food rationing (all over England, but probably worst in schools for the non-wealthy). They never had enough food to eat (his ribs were permanently misshapen from malnutrition) and each boy was given a tiny amount of 'butter' to spread on his one piece of dried bread, so rather than spread it so thin you couldn't taste it, he preferred to spread the butter as far as it would go, even if it covered only one finger of the bread ~ then he'd enjoy it slowly and thoroughly and eat the rest of the bread dry.
Funny how you take your parents' habits for granted! My sisters noticed his bread-spreading habit too, but when I asked them recently about it, they had no idea why he did it that way. I suppose WWI also accounts for his never throwing away food ~ he would eat up the leftovers and when bread went mouldy he'd say 'no harm, it's probably full of penicillin'! I definitely took on the food thing; took me most of my life to reach a point, just a couple of weeks ago, where I composted some old pita bread rather than eat it, mould spots and all!
