The Breakfast Test...

What is it about a buffet that turns people into primitive scavengers? The laws of social etiquette are broken and the red mist comes down; no manners, total disregard for personal hygiene and a complete lack of awareness of personal space. On reflection, that last thing about personal space may be linked to the 'queuing' gene, something all Germans and Spaniards are born without...did their mothers forget to take folic acid or something?!?!

So, whilst the holiday buffet trauma has been inflicted each morning and evening, it has given me a great deal of pleasure in terms of people watching. People are strange, really strange...I know I sound harsh, but at what point is it ok to cough without covering your mouth, push in front of someone, not hold a door open, stink of sweat in a public restaurant, go topless when you have more wrinkles than a piece of crepe paper...do people lose their sense of awareness at a certain age, born without one or just generally not give a shit?!

We all let ourselves go at times, especially when on holiday, and of course with long term friends and loved ones who know and love us, faults and all, but there is relaxing and there is just disgusting!

Loads of couples sitting opposite one another, barely able to see over the mountains of food piled on from the eat for your life/death buffet, stuffing food down as though someone was going to take it away, occasionally coming up for liquid...embroiled in consuming as many calories as possible without breathing. I don't know why they bothered laying tables and chairs, it would have been just as easy to line up some troughs and be done with it!

So...is that what their first dinner date was like; trough central? I often wonder what the turning point in a relationship actually looks like? I used to think it was the 'wind/gas/fart/burp' thing, once you do that in front of someone, it breaks an unwritten rule...then before you know it, you are peeing, puking or worse in front of one another...next thing you know, you are troughing from the buffet! When in love, I guess some of these little faux pas are almost endearing...but over time, familiarity most certainly breeds contempt!

I recently heard that the true test of love is the breakfast test; are you prepared to sit opposite your other half over breakfast, each morning for the rest of your life...toast munching, crumb dropping, cereal gobbling, tea slurping, flem sniffing and any other habits that may appear first thing in the morning? If you already cringe when you hear a nasal sniff, perhaps its time to think about searching for a more suitable, long-term breakfast companion!

My own personal rule is to refrain from doing anything in front of anyone else that makes me cringe, which in my case is almost everything - if the people frequenting the breakfast room at this hotel are anything to go by, I will spending the rest of my life buttering toast for one!

Love is forever, as long as it lasts - Anon