BREAKFAST FAILURE

I have to report yet another failure to break my fast in a “continental” style despite our very best efforts. Somehow, yet again, the fates have plotted against us and the best laid plans have turned to ashes

This time there was even a plan.

It was even quite a good plan.

But circumstances have decided that this tiny little goal in our lives is yet to come to pass…

I’ve mentioned before that we missed out on our planned leisurely breakfast at “Café Rouge” in Gatwick Airport after our overnight layover there on our way back from Egypt back in 2010. Even then circumstances contrived to make this an impossible ambition and instead I suffered alone through a confusing “Best Western” breakfast and managed to force down the “coffee and a bun” option on the flight back to the outer wastes of Lesser Blogfordshire.

After that we’ve always planned to make up for it, but somehow, for whatever reasons, it keeps on not actually happening. Oh, we’ve been out for meals, of course, and even managed to sit down for the odd lunch, and the various B & B’s which we’ve stayed in since have, naturally, served up breakfasts which have ranged from the sublime to the ordinary, but, for so many reasons, our repeated attempts to recreate that “lost” breakfast always seem doomed to failure.

The latest effort happened on a recent Saturday morning. I had an early morning appointment in town and so the plan was to get up early, drive in and deal with that, and then head over to one of the urban areas renowned for its “café culture” and finally sit down for that much missed meal.

However, there had been an unexpectedly late night on Friday evening (following the late night of Thursday’s theatrical entertainments - we’re rapidly becoming “wild-types”, you know...) due to social events in the wider world of the beloved’s employment, and the week had already been complicated by my mother’s sudden return to hospital, and became even more so after her sudden release required me to pick her up during a rainy rush hour and drive her home, and then deal with whatever was necessary to settle her back in.

Unfortunately, this shunted the planned shopping trip out of its Friday night position and it then had to be rescheduled for Saturday morning, after the appointment. Further complications were added by the existence of “Father’s Day” (stupid, card-selling nonsense) in the diary which still hadn’t been prepared for, but after dealing with at least some of these things, we still arrived at my mother’s house at an hour that seemed reasonable for the ordering of breakfast, only to discover that she had a “list…”

A list of “stuff to do”…

Or, more accurately, a list of stuff that she wanted me to do…

At this point, due to the lack of sleep, I was already feeling dead on my feet…

So, instead of contemplating some crusty bread, considering my choice of the most exquisite of jams, and sipping upon cups of the finest coffee, I spent an hour wrestling with a computer which refused to work, hunting down fuses, emptying bins, packing away food and strolling (actually staggering) off to the bank and two more supermarkets to not buy some fuses.

I know, I know… It’s what you’re supposed to do for your elderly kin, but I didn’t half find myself resenting it. Maybe it was the abject fatigue, my own sense of disappointment, or maybe it’s just because I really am the horrible human being that I always think that I am, but sometimes it really does feel far too hard to deal with. (Later on that afternoon, my attempts at catching up on my sleep would be shattered by yet more complications with regard to her ongoing health issues, and I will have to admit that I really didn’t take the news with anything approaching good grace…).

So eventually we escaped and headed off towards the DIY Superstore in search of specific Father’s Day gifts which they didn’t actually sell, although I did find the style of replacement bird feeder which I’d been looking for, and a pack of fuses. After that we headed off to yet another store, this time a Garden Centre, in search of the elusive gift, which we did eventually find, even though a failure of the tills delayed us still further.

By this time it was well beyond what you might consider as “lunchtime” and breakfast had still not been successfully achieved. We talked about it, realised that we were both getting headaches, and decided that all either of us really wanted to do was to go home and eat whatever lunch we could create from the contents of our own supermarket fayre, although we still managed to end up going to yet another supermarket and the shops on our own high street on the way back.

And breakfast, once again, failed to happen…