With her half strength soy latte perched in elegantly manicured talons, my posh pal ‘Beryl’ decided there was nothing on the A la carte menu of 40 items that she wanted to eat. Beryl isn’t her real name but am calling her that because she will hate it; a small revenge on her just because she managed to look so fabulous at an 7.30am breakfast meeting. I did suggest she must be sleeping with her hairdresser to have been blow dried so early, when the salon clearly can’t have been open; and she leaned forward with the earnestness of confessing a sin and said ‘I do it myself!’, like I was going to be shocked she knew where the ON button was on an appliance. Well, I was a little.

Pristine Posh

When I say she is posh, I mean she is one of those blessed folk that seems to drift through life untouched; as if somehow their pedestal cushion allows them to float over the top of the everyday effluent that sticks to  the rest of us and leaves its mark. But that said, she is gorgeously oblivious to her airs and graces, and frankly wouldn’t give a damn. She is a terrific laugh, doesn’t mind at all when I ‘send-her-up’ and make fun of her outrageous ways; she gives as good as she gets does Beryl, which I am sure is one of the main reasons we are mates… she calls a spade a long-handled digging implement!

Nosh with numbers

‘Is it wrong to eat a semi-freddo for breakfast?’ she muses, not if you are hot says I, and you only want a bit of it. {in case you are not a foodie, it is a half-frozen dessert made with cream}. Which got us onto the fractions and multiples that are fashionable in food language: semi-boneless ham, double cooked chips, twice cooked pork belly, 60 degree eggs, double brie, twice cooked goat cheese soufflé, multi-meat pie (yuck…doesn’t bear thinking about!),triple cooked roast potatoes, four cheese pizza, five or six food groups( they don’t count chocolate as its own section), seven-fish stew, one sandwich short of a picnic, half-baked… (food and people)…….

I know what will be ideal for breaky, how about some twice cooked bread I suggest?, ‘Oh, I must have missed that’ she says and re examines the menu…….
TOAST says me.

*Mindful that covers can mask the book, and learned not to write about food coz it makes me hungry.