I AM a Saturday afternoon regular at the Tesco, Prestwich, caf which up to recently has been serving all-day breakfasts and saving me the trouble of cooking.

I turned up a week last Saturday to find that under the management's new policy, which sees 'breakfast items' taken off the menu from 11.30am, there were no sausages available to complement their equally non-existent mash, which wasn't available the previous week either!

I don't know what planet Tesco's managers are on at the moment, but earlier this year they were advertising a lunchtime special in the form of 'bangers and mash'. Now, apparently, sizzling sausages are breakfast items not to be offered later for lunch, and 'mash', I was told by an anonymous assistant, wasn't possible because they have to use small, frozen potatoes. So, it's chips (fairly large considering those small potatoes) with everything!

The cafe has also demoted the illustrious egg, which I would have thought was an all-day item to be addled, boiled, poached, fried, swallowed raw with milk or even thrown at deputy-prime minister John Prescott, depending on the time of day and the customer's inclinations. This being so, I didn't bother to ask about the beans, which in this day and age are all-day items - not breakfast specials.

Go into any local chip shop and if you want sausages and/or beans you can get 'em - lunch and supper and any other opening times. However, not at Tesco, Prestwich; not any more.

So, in a word, Tesco, Prestwich - farewell. In future I'll do my shopping wherever cafes have the good sense to regard the sausage as a 'food' rather than a 'breakfast' item.

PETER WRIGHT, Whitefield.