Has Ruskin's pathetic fallacy as much relevance to breakfast as to a spendthrift crocus? If it's chucking it down with rain then I feel a bit grotty and the breakfast which follows may be more or less canny as a result of my inherent grottiness. All this is by way of saying that I found this breakfast a bit short on canniness but I blame the weather and the atmosphere.
It started well when I spotted this lad outside Central Station with his advertising board.
Just round the corner I found the TownHouse. Completely empty apart from a woman behind the counter and a bloke hovering beside the hot plates. I ordered the veggie breakfast and went to sit beside the window. I became increasingly aware of a silent tension in the place and began to get the strong feeling that I'd just walked in on a simmering row. Now I like a bit of Hopperesqueness but this was all feeling a bit grim.
When my breakfast arrived, it looked like I'd ordered a kind of breakfast soup on a plate, which makes me think perhaps the bloke's mind wasn't on the job in hand:
I like the way the eggs look as though they're sailing across the plate on an ocean of beans and tomatoes. The toast seems to be acting as a kind of breakwater while the mushrooms are obviously wondering whether they can swim.
What can you do, except eat it - which I did. And it was as canny as you might expect. What if the sun had been shining? What if they hadn't just had a blazing row? We'll never know.
If you're in the Toon, why not give the Townhouse a shot and see if Ruskin was right about your breakfast as well?
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