97 and Not Dead Yet: MBHA*

by Reg Green (March 2026)

I came across a challenging comparison in a book I was reading this week: the French, it said, savor their meals, Americans demolish theirs. It’s unfair as a universal rule, of course, and less and less true as the pace of life accelerates everywhere. I’m also struck by the difference between the time it takes to plan, prepare, cook, set the table and clear up after even a fairly straightforward dinner and the speed with which it is gobbled down.
–
A similar imbalance disfigures eating and working. At one time when planning to set up my own news service, I read, with growing disillusion, a sheaf of ‘how to’ articles on starting a business. All were useless. The only helpful piece of advice I came across in tens of thousands of words was “Never work before breakfast” and its inspired modifier: “If you have to work before breakfast, get up early and have breakfast first.”
–
That thought brought to mind mornings in Britain’s Royal Air Force, where I was drafted as an education officer during the Berlin airlift and where my sloppy ways were a disgrace to the uniform. There was one rule, however, that I obeyed religiously: no talking at breakfast. If someone collared the marmalade, purists would cough discreetly and by nodding their head and pointing their nose, signal they wanted it passed back. Extreme? Certainly—but we all took the view that once any breach was allowed the descent into bedlam would be swift, steep and irreversible.
–
Now, happily, this benign military rule has spread to civilian life. In the kind of household that I like best, each member brings his or her own iphone to read the news or emails not just before but during breakfast too—and apart from the subdued chomping of toast or the explosion of Rice Krispies, a blessed silence reigns over the land.
–
Everything, after all, is not getting worse.
–
*Making Breakfast Hushed Again

Table of Contents