Breakfast is not what it used to be. The only time now it reclaims its importance is when on holiday and you’ve paid for the privilege of some slices of artisan bread and a cold meat selection, so beloved of our European friends, and woe betide anyone in the family who doesn’t ‘fancy it this morning’ as you’ve paid for it, so were having it!

Often, with teenagers, that battle is lost, and you do the dad thing and bring them an apple turnover and a croissant less than discreetly encased in a napkin which will likely sit there in the heat for the next three days before it attracts the ants.

Back in blighty, I am firm in the belief that what you have for breakfast says a lot about the cut of your jib. At present, still engaging with the folly of a diet that has not started working after 18 months, I placate my morning routine with a cup of Costa coffee which is purchased as part of a meal deal. Others, such as mother, eat the strangest breakfast which I cannot get my head around: Porridge. If it looks like sick and tastes like sick, then it’s generally sick, and seeing the tasteless lukewarm slop floating about in a bowl does little but make me opt for the more appealing option of morning starvation.

Just as dull are those who eat cornflakes every morning without sugar. Tasteless and bland, their only saving grace is the crispiness and even that USP is lost the nanosecond it encounters milk, quickly turning into a mush with the constitution of the Scottish football team at a major tournament.

It is one of the quirks of life that everything that is fun to do or tastes nice is ultimately bad for you, as we subconsciously weigh up the short-term pleasure against an untimely demise. The full English is a point in question: cooked well, there is little finer, or more pleasing than a bacon, sausage, egg, hash brown and bean riddled concoction that puts warmth in your heart and fur in the arteries. Noticing the popularity, food outlets now treble the price by using selling points such as ‘grilled’ or ‘hand reared sausages’ and by not using the term ‘gutbuster’ whilst cleverly avoiding advertising the calorie intake.

Back to cereals and, although the choices available to us are hugely more diverse than in decades past, the new future greats are only so as they are caked in sugar. A favourite of mine is chocolate granola and cinnamon toast crunch. Feeling like a proper middle-aged dad, I place the granola bags on the checkout as I imagine others thinking ‘there goes a fitness freak’ before getting home and realising that said bags are only good for a mid-afternoon snack and are never going to see the morning light.

Toast, despite being a quick to prepare foodstuff, is really an accompaniment. If you get it just right, with a slither of Marmite perhaps, it acts like the beginning of a crack addiction and a slice or two is never enough. By the second round, the quality goes down as they are more browned than round one and the time taken would have been better served by knocking up a bacon or sausage butty instead.

Sadly, in my circles, the time, care, and love taken over breakfasts is becoming outdated as now either nothing or anything goes. Cold pizza, some Hula Hoops, or a bag of Haribo are now the go-tos as we no longer sit down as families with those strange plastic cereal holder contraptions (the likes of which are now only found in B&Bs) and chew the cud prior to the day’s activity.

As for me, I am happy with the Costa liquid morning start me up, but am looking forward to retirement when I will endeavour for a full English every morning as, by then, the health issues and life longevity will not be as much of a concern as we put sustenance and enjoyment above self-inflicted morning punishment…

  • Brett Ellis is a teacher