My breakfast diet has changed often over the years – from mother’s milk to muesli and so on.
At Barmeath I had Corn Flakes with creamy milk from the cows, a cooked course, toast and coffee. One morning this week I had two slices of black pudding with coffee and felt a bit sick actually.
‘Mrs Bates, let me propose your venturing on one of these eggs. An egg boiled very soft is not unwholesome. Serle understands boiling an egg better than any body. I would not recommend an egg boiled by any body else – but you need not be afraid – they are very small, you see – one of our small eggs will not hurt you. Mrs Bates, let Emma help you to a little bit of tart – a very little bit. Ours are all apple tarts. I do not advise the custard. Mrs Goddard, what say you to half a glass of wine? A small half glass – put into a tumbler of water? I do not think it could disagree with you’. (Jane Austen, Emma)
This morning I had Focaccia al Pomodoro with cherry tomatoes, rosemary & oregano. I took Mr Woodhouse’s advice and had a glass of rosé although I omitted the water. Both the focaccia and the rosé were left over from last night so it was both an economy and nutritious. Breakfast is supposed to be the most important meal of the day and I’m veering away from 0% fat yogurt sprinkled with roughage and honey.
After breakfast I listened to a Radio 4 Xtra adaptation of Barry Lyndon. It is good and has picked some bits of Thackeray’s novel omitted from Kubrick’s 1975 film. It is wonderful dead-pan humour. A trope of the novel (1844), film and radio adaption is the question to Barry; “where are you from”. Barry of course almost always lies.
Now put your chest waders on because we are going into deeper waters. Although she has supporters including me, Lady Susan Hussey has been very publicly sacked from her unpaid job of some sixty-two years for asking the same question. Like Robin Day she persisted. You will remember him interviewing the Japanese Foreign Minister in 1959 about ball-bearings.
I don’t expect she was much interested in the answer but – a tough old bird – she did want to elicit a response. The complainant kept refusing to reply and then, worse, went on social media to out Lady Susan as a racist. But everybody will have their own opinion of this storm in a teacup.
Very well said about Lady SH. Fell in a trap I fear.
Yes, an opinion……… I also thought it was over-egged until I read the transcript of the conversation. If correct, Lady SH did receive responses to her questions but she refused to accept them, and persisted to the point of harassment.
I agree with Rosemary. Odd that Lady SH (now who could that be) should sink into plain rudeness after a lifetime at court. Makes me wonder if perhaps she too had indulged in a glass of rose at breakfast.
LSH – Feeling her age and time to retire after many years of loyal service.
Whilst I am always in awe of CB’s intellectual abilities, to be conscious of the implications of Robin Day’s line of questioning of the Japanese Foreign minister at the age of 4, elevates him to genius levels.
I was a precocious child and admired Robin Day’s bow ties as well as his interviewing technique.
I remember when Barry Lyndon was filmed in Kilkenny.Quite a few were extras including Bill Blunden,driving pigs down the High Street
Thirty years ago, it was imagined that the model programmer, the “hacker”–young, deeply committed to his trade, asocial, working long hours–tended to breakfast on cold pizza left over from the night before. (Wine was not thought to be a feature of the hacker’s breakfast, probably because alcohol rather quickly interferes with programming.)