Being Prepared

It's always time for a Full English Breakfast, especially at 2.30 in the afternoon. This magnificent FEB (plus chips) was enjoyed by Mrs TIW and I at the Perugia Café, Tottenham Street, which is up by Heal's. If the Perugia was a 'proper' formica caff once, not much evidence remains. There's artexted walls and vinyl benches in booths so small that your knees touch that of your companion. That's all that's left, but it's a typical London caff with condensation on the window and big brown 'n' red sauce squirters on the tables. Here, you get egg, bacon, tomato, mushrooms, beans, (when did beans become part of an FEB? Was it the 1980s?) sausage, chips, two rounds of toast and tea or coffee for £4.50. I've paid more than that for a sandwich in the past. Those chips were chopped off a potato. No reconstituted carbohydrate powder here. And that sausage had flavour - full of herby meatiness, rather than the Pink Bag Of Mystery encountered in some establishments. It was the perfect preparation for the hand-to-hand combat that is Christmas shopping in London. Even if it did come with baked beans.