On Breakfast

A Victorian gentleman’s early repast might be kedgeree and steak and a kipper,
Which some poor consumptive drudge of a kitchen-maid would have been cooking since five in the morning or else the housekeeper would whip her.
Now if that gentleman were a great progressive thinker like Joseph Rowntree or Charles Booth,
He might have dreamt of a future in which technology enabled everyone in the nation to enjoy beauty and art and truth!
When writing a list of such utopian ideals he would no doubt include on it,
That every breakfast table in the land should have a clean linen tablecloth and a large pot of tea and plenty of delicious food on it.
But sadly that day has not yet come,
And here in the twenty-first century we eat cereals which are formulated to be ‘balanced’ instead of enjoyable rather like Pedigree Chum,
Which we then moisten into an easily-ingested homogeneous mush which if you’re lucky might have a scrap of dried fruit in,
And proceed to spoon down our gullets as rapidly as possible in order to leave sufficient time to commute in.
Where we could warm a chocolate croissant or squeeze an orange we instead dole out a ration of mass-produced processed foodstuff and joylessly trough it,
Because we live in a world in which pleasure is deemed morally suspect and injurious to Profit.
So I hereby incite breakfast rebellion,
And urge all right-thinking people to eat something tasty for breakfast like bacon or a hot buttered crumpet with homemade crab apple jelly on,
And to shun that bland soulless material
That goes by the name of ‘breakfast cereal’.
And if you say “Don’t be ridiculous, there’s nothing sinister about Ready Brek” to me,
I’ll remind you that the inventor of the cornflake was a vociferous advocate of clitoridectomy,
Who was deeply concerned about high birthrates among the racially impure lower classes,
And put yoghurt up people’s arses.
So it’s no coincidence that the epitome of what's wrong with society today
Is Special K.