99 YEARS OLD AND STILL ENJOYS A GOOD BREAKFAST...
THE trouble with the young people of today is that they clearly do not understand breakfast, as I discovered the other evening when lured into a London food market by the promise of mustard-enhanced pork crackling.
The food market, I should explain, was Partridge’s, in Duke of York Square, Chelsea, which offers a wide variety of very impressive foodstuffs and is currently hosting an equally impressive exhibition of paintings by the young artist Emily Ponsonby and several packs of Mr Trotter’s Great British Pork Crackling were scattered around the place, possibly because the exhibition itself was called Breakfast.
The paintings are a delight, as was Mr Trotter’s crackling, especially the mustard flavoured variety which I feel would enhance any plate of egg and bacon. There were, indeed, several small paintings of eggs, along with a few larger ones of people having breakfast and a relaxed fellow with a croissant at his feet. Remarkably, they were all executed in an accomplished classical style which was a pleasure to see, so where, you may wonder, did my doubts about the young people of today creep onto this breakfast menu?
Well the first time was when I noticed two paintings of dogs. Why dogs? I wondered. Surely pigs would have been more appropriate, especially with so much crackling around.
Then I noticed young Ms Ponsonby’s thoughts about breakfast displayed on a card on the wall. “Breakfast,” she says, “those first few moments of the day that are entirely yours. You have set your alarm, you know how long you need to shrug off the hazy cloak of sleep; and you know, most importantly, what is waiting in the fridge to fuel your body and keep hunger at bay.”
She then talks of pondering the new day, lazing in the bath, taking the dog for a walk and (worst of all) jogging.
How can this talented and otherwise delightful young lady have got her breakfast things so wrong when her paintings are so right?
Breakfast, on most days, occupies those first few moments of the day when you are infuriated by the alarm going off, know that you have no time to cook anything proper, pour a quick bowl of Frosties, make a cup of tea, have as quick a bath as possible, shave, brush teeth, dress, can’t find an ironed shirt or a pair of socks, snarl at the dog, if you are foolish enough to own one and it wants to be taken out for a walk or a poo, and generally have to do everything at breakneck speed in order to leave the house in time to get a bus to the station and catch the train to town in order to get to work on time. And you definitely, if you know what is good for you, are not remotely tempted to go for a jog.
Yet if she had inserted the word “Saturday” before breakfast, it would cure everything: sleep unalarmed until 10am, put on dressing gown, make tea, watch Saturday Kitchen then pop into one’s own kitchen to cook an inspired, leisurely breakfast-at-noon, still in the dressing gown. No dog; no jog.
Great art, terrible Monday to Friday breakfast. Do pop into Partridge’s and see if you don’t agree with me.