4. Breakfast

The dining room is an ugly prefab building erected in the late sixties when the school expanded and outgrew the original Georgian house. The long melamine tables are lined up in rows with benches down each side and chairs at the ends. A prefect or teacher sits at the head of the table. Everyone is dashing to get to their table and I’m not sure what the rush is. As I reach the table I’ve been allocated to I hear the two girls sitting near the prefect gabbling the words “Vainsy tray and cutlery” as fast as they can. Pamela, the slightly older one to the right of the prefect says it just a few seconds before Cathy. I have no idea what they are talking about.

I’ve stopped paying attention to them because I am transfixed by the figure of the Sixth Form Prefect sitting at the end of our table,  I am struck dumb with awe. She’s so beautiful and she looks so… so grown up. She’s tall and slender and has the face of an angel with deep blue eyes, long blonde hair and smooth, pale skin. I think I have fallen in love. I can’t stop staring at her. I feel grateful to be sitting at the end of the bench farthest from her. I couldn't trust myself to say anything coherent if she were to speak me.

Our tables are assigned at the beginning of term and we move seats clockwise around the table every day. I'll be sitting next to the angel by the end of the week. The two girls sitting on either side of her have to clear the table. One will load the tray with the serving dishes and the cutlery, she also has the horrible job of wiping the table clean. There is a very specific way of doing this which we are shown when it’s our first turn, sweeping the clammy, bleach smelling cloth up and down the table in hairpin bends making sure we gather all the crumbs and debris as we go. The other girl will clear the plates and any leftover food. The latter is by far the less disgusting job. This explains the rush to avoid the tray and cutlery, no one wants to have to wipe the table down, it's disgusting.

In perfect harmony with the race to claim the plates rather than the tray and cutlery, all the other girls are rushing to say “Bagsy first extra”. I must look like a right lemon standing there, staring from one to the other to the Prefect, looking baffled. Apparently, this too is a race worth winning, the first person to ‘bagsy' the 'first extra’ lays her claim to any food going begging. This is particularly coveted for high tea when we are given bread, butter, jam, tea and, best of all, biscuits. One biscuit each. Sometimes we are treated to Wagon Wheels or chocolate covered Lyon’s Viscount biscuits or Penguins, but only ever one each. So being fast at claiming the first extra is a skill worth mastering. If anyone is missing from tea, or the kitchen has miscounted, it’s the winner's lucky day. At breakfast, it might mean extra toast or a second sausage. In any case, I learn, it’s always worth winning this prize.

Miss Havard, the Headmistress strides into the dining room and before we sit down we all chant in unison: “For what we are about to receive, may the Lord make us truly thankful” following her lead. At most meals I struggle to be truly thankful. The food is truly dreadful.

Breakfast, it turns out, is definitely my favourite meal of the day. Plentiful and mostly edible. Two qualities which the other meals can’t lay claim to. I’ve learned to quite like cold toast. It’s particularly good spread thickly with butter and then slathered in marmite, mixing the butter and the marmite together to form a creamy, tangy paste. Rice Krispies or Corn Flakes are delicious, I’ve discovered, drowned in the top of the milk. I’m amazed that no one tells me off when I take my bowl up to the counter and pour off the thick cream from the gold top bottles, left in the crate for us to top up the milk jugs. It takes about three or four milk tops to cover my cereal and I seem to get away with it every day.

The buzz of chatter rises as one hundred and fifty girls and a smattering of teachers tuck in. I gawk in horror as two of the girls at my table smear dollops of marmalade on their sausages. At first, I think it’s a practical joke, I know they all think I’m a bit odd, unaccustomed as I am to the peculiarities of the English boarding school. But apparently, this is thought to be quite a delicacy, one I cannot bring myself to try. Apart from kippers and scrambled eggs made from the powdered variety, the cooked breakfasts are not bad at all. Crispy bacon (most of the time) and juicy pork sausages are a welcome start to a day that is likely to end in tinned ravioli and soggy chips or TVP bolognese (textured vegetable protein is possibly the vilest culinary invention) on severely overcooked, waterlogged spaghetti. I make the most of breakfast and high tea, which means I live primarily off stodgy, beige comfort food. My mother would be horrified if she knew. But she doesn’t.

When I go home for the holidays, one of the first things I do is open the fridge and stare. I find just seeing the abundance of cheeses and fresh vegetables, cold cuts, my mother’s homemade pickled herring, yoghurt and condiments and meat and fish so comforting and reassuring. My mother laughs and says anyone would think I have never seen food before. She has no idea how close to the bone her comments are. The truth is I’ve almost forgotten what fresh food and home cooking tastes like. I hate school food with a vengeance. I particularly dread lunch and dinner as I bargain with my hunger, trying to eat just enough to see me through, holding my breath to avoid tasting. Holding my breath, to avoid feeling desperately homesick for one fresh meal, cooked with care.

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I am not a breakfast eater. I never had been. When I lived at home my mother used to implore me to eat something before going to school, but I couldn’t stomach food in the mornings. At boarding school I had to adapt. Breakfast foods were by far the most palatable and so I learned to eat breakfast. As soon as I was in charge of my eating patterns, when I went to University, I stopped and have never looked back. I still like breakfast foods and so sometimes I have them for lunch or even dinner. Cornflakes or Rice Crispies with cream or top of the milk, will forever rank as my absolute favourite comfort food.

Looking back at the awe I experinced in relation to some of the older girls, I can see that my girlhood crushes were important. They tell me something about who I am, even if I did not know it then. I am grateful for these memories.