Saturday Breakfast

Saturday breakfast is how all breakfasts should be – with the option to become supper. No kitchen multi-tasking and over-the-shoulder glances at the clock. Turn and look out of the window instead.

Minor correction: “time is of the essence” should read “time is the essence”. Sweet, gentle, endless time. When did you last lay in the moist grass, look up at the stars and allow yourself to be drawn across endless millions of years? Or watch the timeless jostling of clouds as they build and billow high above you in the blue? Or watch the sun fall to its slow inevitable death, snuffed out by a placid, ever-shifting, disinterested sea?

Empty your head of all burdensome thoughts, let it rise in the water, let go the anchor and drift. Dream. Imagine. Let life flow from your mind to your pen and spill out onto the page. Know that you are alive, prove it to yourself and document it on the neatly lined paper. Allow the ‘real’ and the ‘imaginary’ to blur, for there really is no line of demarcation. It is all real. The journey you took through familiar but unknown cities, with close friends and lovers you have never met, while twisting and turning in your sheets is as real as the shoes that you kicked from your swollen, sore feet at the end of your working week – and more so. It is your humdrum, daytime life with wings added. It is you with the locks off the doors. Hold on to it. Keep it and don’t overwrite it so easily with grocery lists and rubbish bins to empty.

Savour the morning coffee, then stop. Close your eyes and let your mind see. Observe. Watch the egg boil outside measured time. Watch and smell as it boils dry, splits and spills its innards into the pan to burn, stink and ruin. It is in your gift. Do it.

Did it happen? Of course. Did I move from this seat? No. But it happened right here – an essential breakfast ingredient.

A leisurely stroll of perhaps three yards through verdant woods. Wind whispering through trees that shine silver in the moonlight; the soft hiss of the recent rain falling onto the forest floor and I am at the kitchen sink. I have decided to add porridge to my Saturday breakfast. Traditional milled oats, a stainless steel pan, unharmed, and a cup of water that I draw from the sink. Onto the heat, a quick stir and retire for a sip of coffee.

My mind fights off a probing attack by the pile of dirty pots and survives a brief but terrifying skirmish with the Combined Tasks for Saturday Force. My eyes drift to guitar, showing too much cleavage and leg in an effort to entice me over to the sofa, where it leans back provocatively. Later, my love.

The porridge pops and spits its mayday to be saved from the same fate as the egg. I rush to its aid and pour it, just in time, into the bowl and safety. Not so lucky is the Kiwi Fruit, stripped of its hairy skin and dismembered into the bowl with the porridge. Winners and losers. Ultimately, it was a bad day, also, for the porridge. You can pop, you can spit, but no one will help you now. It accepted its fate with silent dignity. One couldn’t help but be moved.

Measured time whispers in my ear that, according to the prevailing view, it is now lunchtime. My breakfast is suddenly over-run. Lists burst through the weakened perimeter and begin firing sustained volleys of thought-piercing tasks into my mind. I am overwhelmed. The tents of my dreams collapse onto their occupants, killing them. It’s hopeless. I surrender to the afternoon, but it’s too late to help the porridge.