Getting My Oats

Not even two years out of date so I had some for breakfast.

Waiting in Heathrow Terminal 5 for a morning flight one must find one’s pleasures where one can – and there aren’t many to find. I like to have a pot of porridge at Pret A Manger. It comes with a sachet of honey and, if you are wise, you will ask somebody younger to open that for you. I remember asking older people to do things for me, like tying my shoe laces, now only the young can solve some of the problems of modern life for me. It only costs about £4 – much cheaper and healthier than the alternatives, although instant porridge does have high sugar content; perhaps a bacon and egg roll at about £6. Sometimes I have breakfast at the Polish cafe by Barons Court station. My usual order is two slices of buttered brown toast with scrambled eggs, two rashers and a Flat White; rounded up for a tip; £10.

This morning I had porridge at home. 1 kg costs about £3 and provides about twenty-five helpings – do the math as Americans say. You probably know the health enhancing properties of rolled oats, just look at all the data in green on the packet, but it is never mentioned that it can be made without needing any more washing up afterwards than a bowl of Corn Flakes, if you use a microwave. Cooking takes about two minutes – just time to make a cup of coffee.

On the second day of Christmas my true love gave to me two turtle doves. If you were at the Barmeath Christmas shoot the bag was two pheasants and two bottles of port afterwards in case the guns needed consolation. I hear it was most convivial. It is the antithesis of shoots with hundreds of low flying, reared birds slaughtered often with competition between guns poaching each other’s birds. Do you remember Lord Gilbert Hartlip (Edward Fox) and Lionel Stephens (Rupert Frazer) competing in The Shooting Party? It’s an example of a film every bit as good as Isabel Colegate’s novel.