Why Breakfast in Bed Isn’t Fun at All
Adeline loves food, lots of it and often, both at home and out. It usually goes well, but sometimes it doesn’t. In the Sunday Roast series, she shares her observations. This time: breakfast in bed.
Mother’s Day.
I can easily imagine that mothers across the Netherlands were tossing and turning in bed from six o’clock this morning, wondering: what kind of physical and mental damage are they causing in the kitchen? At an absurdly early hour, you have to lie there neatly dressed under those sweltering blankets, because your child or children (whom you probably made yourself too, but for whom you are at least responsible because they live in your house) are standing by your bed with breakfast. Apparently, the ultimate gesture of gratitude for those other three hundred-and-something days. There’s just one problem: breakfast in bed is hell.
It could have been so delicious
You’re lying half-slumped on your elbow when the plate or tray arrives (but who even has a tray these days?). Then you just have to hope the freshly squeezed orange juice (which is stuck to the ceiling of your kitchen downstairs) is stable and doesn’t immediately spill all over your freshly washed sheets because your darling child trips over a slipper or their own feet. At the sight of what you’re about to eat, you suddenly think back to that one chef you once made out with in an alley—and what he/she is making today. It could have been so delicious.
The tray is carefully slid onto your stomach, so far so good, and you look at the large mug at the back right, filled with black liquid. Should I take a sip already? At that moment, the figures by your bed decide they want a place on the sheet too, and you have to grab hold of all the drinks and food to keep them from being catapulted across the bedroom. The hot liquid gushes over the edge, and you do your best not to swear, continuing to look at the crowd—by now squeezing your left foot and forearm—with a serene Mother Teresa smile.
In the Bermuda Triangle
With a bit of luck, you’ll get fresh strawberries with quark, because that doesn’t spill over the edge, unlike cornflakes with milk, and of course the famous croissant. You already know that two days later you’ll still be picking a piece of it from your arm in the bathroom, trying to figure out what it was again. Croissants shatter just from looking at them and immediately disappear into the Bermuda Triangle between duvet and décolletage, even though you haven’t touched them yet. Only to reappear somewhere around your navel or big toe. This can happen weeks and washes later (just like popcorn, but that’s a completely different story).
Picking out pieces of croissant
Meanwhile, you hear all those rumbling (children’s) tummies while you eat alone, because nothing else fit on that blasted tray. So somewhere halfway through breakfast, you’re left alone in bed, the blood slowly flowing back into your limbs, and you have to figure out how to get yourself and all that food out of bed. Which is an impossible task, so you take another sip of coffee while trying to brush a piece of croissant off the duvet.
Coffee in bed, by the way, is absolutely divine. You may bring me coffee in bed at any time of day, provided I’m in bed, of course—but if you tell me in time, I’ll voluntarily get back into bed to drink coffee there. I know people who get coffee in bed every day. Unfortunately, I only get that on holiday. But one thing is certain from now on: that breakfast in bed can go where the sun doesn’t shine.
Happy Mother’s Day y’all.
Read also:
