Thursday 17th July

We live in rapidly changing times.  Sometimes it seems we are on a rollercoaster to hell, or some place I don’t want to think about.  I read a lot of Victorian novels, set in slower moving times, although even then the Victorian times of 1850 are totally unrecognisable by 1890.  And so it is now.

As a child, breakfast was eaten together around the dining table.  Most days it was cornflakes or porridge in winter followed by toast and jam or marmalade.  But it was a family time, we sat together and though maybe sleepy-eyed there was some conversation.  Bringing my own children up I followed the same routine, but slowly over the years things have changed.  I started working earlier and earlier, often leaving the house before anyone else was awake.  I would breakfast alone, usually a bowl of cereal or a yoghurt as I was packing my bag for work.

Now we have a routine where a cup of tea and maybe five minutes of chat in the morning has to suffice before we each get ready.  Sometimes even this space is taken up by reading e-mails (and answering them) and me on my laptop, my wife on her phone scan our facebooks.  Then it is off to work.  I stop at a Pret to write this blog, eating an almond croissant and sipping my latte.  But I am not alone, the place is full of similar breakfasters on the run.  Our lives are so full, e-mails, facebook, texts, on-line news, breakfast tv that we have no time for sitting for even fifteen minutes together in the mornings and just waking up slow.   Soon it will be France and a different pace of life entirely, there I will go out for croissants and we will have time for each other again.