Looking at my dire amazon rating today, I decided that making enough money to buy a penthouse in Rome from my books may not be that realistic. So I wrote to my aunt in Rome asking her to forgive me and telling her how marvellous she is. (See ‘Publish and be Damned’ blog by clicking here.)

In many ways she is marvellous; for example she looks twenty years younger than she is and has also managed to find a good-looking, much younger man to run around her for the past twenty-five years. It’s not even as if he’s poor and after her money, he has plenty of his own. When they came to stay at Christmas I was amazed. He would get up, at least an hour before her and prepare her breakfast. This would consist of freshly-squeezed grapefruit juice, immaculately cut pineapple chunks (I swear he measured each one) and wholemeal toast with honey. Her coffee would be made in a little coffee machine he brought with him from Italy. Once the breakfast was ready he would make minute adjustments to the cutlery, making sure it was perfectly aligned and look nervously towards the door, awaiting her arrival.

This morning I too had breakfast prepared for me. This is not normally something that happens in our household. For some unknown reason it’s an unwritten rule that I always get out of bed first and make the tea. But, my husband is away, so anything could happen…..

My breakfast consisted of a tray with four apple compotes on it, a teaspoon, a bottle of orange juice and a dried fig. “Surprise,” said my littlest girl Bea as she wandered into my bedroom, beaming, at 6.45am.

No fresh grapefruit juice? No exquisitely cut pineapple? And call me old fashioned but 6.45 on a Sunday morning is a little on the early side. Especially as I had been up until 11.30 pm desperately trying to finish that bloody article from the New York Review of Books. But I have to say, and it’s going to sound very gooey, I’d still prefer Bea in charge of my breakfast any day.

copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2007