The right attitude for breakfast

I think you can tell a great deal about the disposition of a city by the way it eats breakfast. London doesn't do breakfast well, even when it's supposed to be having a lazy Sunday. Londoner's don't value it as a meal and it feels forced even when labelled as brunch. Apart from the fry up which few would do more that once a week, it's all grabbed coffees, builders tea, cornflakes and toast. Londoners are busy sorts, they get up in a flurry and the daily grind of tube trains, buses, grey weather and traffic make us get up with a sense of purpose, a sense of fatalism about the morning. They don't seem to be able to take their time over it.

Sydney does breakfast very very well. Even the tiniest tourist trap cafe on The Rocks can muster some decent coffee, a couple of thick slices of fruit toast, some freshly squeezed juice and a fruit salad that would have the Observer Food Monthly doing a feature. I think it says something about Sydneysiders. I'm not sure what, but something good. Probably, that they are at least capable of just sitting back and enjoying their surroundings first thing in the morning. Easier, I suppose, when you can check out Harbour views in the sun on a ferry as opposed to the number 23 bus on the Old Kent Road in the rain.