Breakfast order

 

    There has been much talk in the media over the last few days about breakfast, sparked by Seb Emina, author of The Breakfast Bible, and his advice on starting the day as given on the Today programme. He says you should take your time over breakfast, have the radio on, read the paper and not talk, and for what's it worth that's rather the pattern in this house as generally, being first up, Mr. C. and I eat alone together with Radio 3 and the newspapers for company, and the only talk apart from the need for chivvying whoever else should be up betimes, is to comment on the music that is playing or to remark on something of interest in the news.

    If you're in London in mid-March you can attend a 'breakfast evening' with Seb Emina and Dr. Kaori O'Connor, discussing the history and rituals of breakfasting, and here's a nice piece by Oliver Pritchett in which he talks about "toast and telepathy" and the Pinter-esque breakfast table conversations he has with his wife. (Click the link and scroll down for his bit on paint colour names, too - "Haughty Porridge" and the rest!

    The plate is from Emma Bridgewater's Black Toast range.

Comments

[Dark Puss]

I'm certainly not in the "don't talk" camp! If I'm reading then I'm not listening properly to music and vice versa so one or the other if I must not converse with my breakfast companions.

[Cornflower]

I tune in and out, listening with full attention to the pieces I want to hear, ignoring the others and concentrating on my reading, but we certainly don't have a 'don't talk' rule, preferring rather to let conversation take the shape it will!

[Dark Puss]

Why does Emina recommend "no talking" at breakfast?

[Cornflower]

I think he feels the focus should be on the food.

[Freda]

Maybe because some of us are not awake yet? And as for starting the day with the world's bad news - Nooo!

[Cornflower]

I'm selective in my reading, as in my listening!

[Dark Puss]

He eats dinner in silence too??? I think food and company demands engagement and conversation.

[Dark Puss]

I listen to the news at 06:00 every morning, good or bad. I clearly don't have any of Cornflower's selective listening talents.

[Cornflower]

I suppose it depends on the company, e.g. Mr. C. and I have that 'companionable silence' I described, just passing the odd remark (apart from the paper, I'm often to be found reading a book at breakfast and don't want chat), but if we have guests - as you know - there is conversation. I ought to add that no-one reads or listens to the radio at any other meal here, and mobile phones are banned always.

[Ruth M.]

You are all way more sociable at an early hour than I could ever dream of being. Orange juice and coffee, first thing, and taken back to bed, but no talking, please. We don't usually eat breakfast together but if we do, say on the weekends, it's definitely conversational. But by then an hour or two has passed and my brain has begun processing and all is well.

[Cornflower]

I like the "taken back to bed" bit, Ruth! I am usually woken up with a cup of tea as the kind Mr. C. is on his way out with the dogs for their early walk, but then I get up and put the coffee on, etc., so we are both fairly awake by the time we sit down together - enough to discuss the relative 'done-ness' of our poached eggs, at any rate.

[Mr Cornflower]

Music is an interesting one. At breakfast anything astringent is unwelcome; this covers quite a wide range, from spiky modernism to the plaintive weebling noise of baroque counter-tenors, When one of these pieces starts Cornflower and I look at each other and nod agreement: "off". I also deprecate the recent innovation on Radio 3 of getting listeners to call in and talk about a piece of special personal significance to them, this also prompts a rush for the off button. Many years ago there was a correspondence on breakfast music in The Times which ended with the pithy maxim "nothing written after 1800 should be played before 0800." I tend to agree (though one might might make an exception for Schubert, Ravel and Debussy).

[Nancy]

Sorry for the length, but I just have to share this poem with you, a favorite of ours - written by Galway Kinnell while staying in a cabin at a writers' retreat. I've copied this from online - but, comparing it to our copy (and that particular poem is autographed), I see the online version has a few more lines inserted - bear with my attempt at line breaks (they may not turn out here):

Oatmeal

I eat oatmeal for breakfast.
I make it on the hot plate and put skimmed milk on it.
I eat it alone.
I am aware it is not good to eat oatmeal alone.
Its consistency is such that is better for your mental health if somebody eats it with you.
That is why I often think up an imaginary companion to have breakfast with.
Possibly it is even worse to eat oatmeal with an imaginary companion.
Nevertheless, yesterday morning, I ate my oatmeal
porridge, as he called it with John Keats.
Keats said I was absolutely right to invite him:
due to its glutinous texture, gluey
lumpishness, hint of slime, and unsual willingness to
disintigrate, oatmeal should not be eaten alone.
He said that in his opinion, however, it is perfectly OK to eat it with an imaginary companion,
and that he himself had enjoyed memorable porridges with Edmund Spenser and John Milton.
Even if eating oatmeal with an imaginary companion is not as wholesome as Keats claims, still, you can learn something from it.
Yesterday morning, for instance, Keats told me about writing the "Ode to a Nightingale."
He had a heck of a time finishing it those were his words
"Oi 'ad a 'eck of a toime," he said, more or less, speaking through his porridge.
He wrote it quickly, on scraps of paper, which he then stuck in his pocket,
but when he got home he couldn't figure out the order of the stanzas, and he and a friend spread the papers on a table, and they made some sense of them, but he isn't sure to this day if they got it right.
An entire stanza may have slipped into the lining of his jacket through a hole in his pocket.
He still wonders about the occasional sense of drift between stanzas, and the way here and there a line will go into the configuration of a
Moslem at prayer, then raise itself up and peer about, then lay itself down slightly off the mark,
causing the poem to move
forward with a reckless, shining wobble.
He said someone told him that later in life Wordsworth heard about
the scraps of paper on the table, and tried shuffling some
stanzas
of his own, but only made matters worse.
I would not have known any of this but for my reluctance to eat oatmeal alone.
When breakfast was over, John recited "To Autumn."
He recited it slowly, with much feeling, and he articulated the words
lovingly, and his odd accent sounded sweet.
He didn't offer the story of writing "To Autumn," I doubt if there is much of one.
But he did say the sight of a just-harvested oat field go thim started on it,
and two of the lines, "For Summer has o'er-brimmed their
clammy cells" and "Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours," came to him while eating oatmeal alone.
I can see him drawing a spoon through the stuff, gazing into the glimmering furrows, muttering.
Maybe there is no sublime; only the shining of the amnion's tatters.
For supper tonight I am going to have a baked potato left over from lunch.
I am aware that a leftover baked potato is damp, slippery,
and simultaneaously gummy and crumbly,
and therefore I'm going to invite Patrick Kavanagh
to join me.

Galway Kinnell

[Lisa]

Listening to Breakfast today (BBC 3/9th Jan ) I laughed so hard I almost choked on my toast ...to the reference of a programme of music by the 'humble Joe Green.'
When first I began learning Italian and realised that translated,Guiseppe Verdi was Joe Green...well...it was a little shattering. But hopefully his genius would still have been recognised if he had been born in Britain and known as Mr J Green...I wonder.

[Cornflower]

I love it! Thankyou so much, Nancy.

[Cornflower]

Ah, the romance of other languages!

[Dark Puss]

I'm always fascinated, because it isn't in my nature, about views on appropriate times/places for types of music (or indeed books). I'm as happy listening to Berg, Glass, Henze or Xenakis at 07:00 as I am at 17:00 (and yes I like all of these composers). I suspect my ability to appreciate music is probably best in the mornings when I am (usually) least tired and most attentive. If I am on my own (rare in the UK) then I might indeed listen to music over breakfast, but generally I'll be thinking rather than listening or reading.