BREAKFAST ACCOMPLISHED

After much procrastination and distraction during the intervening three and a bit years, I can finally and happily report that “continental breakfast out has finally been achieved!” Now, I’ll grant you that, as achievements go, it’s hardly up there with climbing Everest or setting foot on the moon, nor does it plumb the very depths of “touching bottom” in the Marianas Trench, but, in comparison to just switching on the TV and watching the news, or pouring out a bowl of Corn Flakes, it’s got to be something…

To be fair, however, by the time we get all of the other weekend morning nonsense out of the way, the appointments, battling our way around the supermarket, delivering foodstuffs to the elderly and ungracious, and then rattling around trying to find parking spaces, the idea of heading to the preferred café we wanted to go to usually feels far too exhausting, and, because time has usually marched on a bit, it would probably be something more like a “continental brunch” by the time we actually sat down to eat it.

By then we still feeling pretty famished, too and have our lunch…

But, once upon a long ago, we had planned to sit down in Gatwick airport and have a leisurely and civilized breakfast after our overnight stay as we travelled back from Egypt but, due to various unpleasant circumstances, we had little in the way of collective appetites and I had ended up eating Corn Flakes and toast all alone in a corporate hotel whilst we fretted about whether the one hour flight to our final destination was even possible under the present personal conditions.

Anyway, we had planned to make up for it on another day, but somehow life kept on getting in the way of that, until last weekend when the jigsaw pieces finally came together in our favour.

Sort of...

Obviously we had to drag ourselves out of bed at a ridiculously early hour, and we had already grabbed a swift slice of toast or two when we dashed off to the station and headed into the big city only to find that we’d been misinformed about certain opening times, so the jigsaw pieces weren’t looking too promising as we mooched around with an hour to kill.

But then, we spotted it.

Conveniently placed right across the road from where the establishment that the appointment that was our main reason for being in the city at all was booked. A café from the very same chain as the one at Gatwick Airport that we had planned to call in at all those years ago.

Moments later we were sitting down and ordering fresh coffee and fruit juice and baguettes and jam and pastries, and when it came it was all rather lovely and filled that unexpected spare hour, and our bellies, almost to perfection, and was so successful that we readily agreed that we ought to do t again some time.

Presumably in a decade or so when the fates decree that it is the right time for us to do so.

Still, in the meantime, I have to report...

Breakfast accomplished.