Laura Craik on the joys of a breakfast buffet

Plus a close call for British Interrailers and a new Turlington on the block
The joys of a breakfast buffet
Getty Images
Laura Craik15 August 2019

When it comes to summer holidays, we all want different things.

Some want sun. Some want culture. Some want steamy no-strings sex. My desires are simple: comfy loungers and a shit-hot breakfast buffet. If the breakfast buffet is pants, the holiday is dead to me right from the very first morning.

As anyone who has queued disconsolately behind a crazed woman ordering 12 pancakes and a ham, cheese, mushroom, spinach, tomato and red pepper omelette will attest, even the most munificent breakfast buffet can be ruined by the behaviour of your fellow guests. Faced with the prospect of unlimited ‘free’ food, few of us bring our best self to the table. Instead, we bring a plate groaning with smoked salmon, hash browns, baked beans, fried mushroom, two types of bacon, three types of egg, five different and equally unidentifiable chunks of cheese, a baguette, a croissant, a slice of burnt toast that got stuck in the toaster and some weird foreign sausage. This jolly heart attack on a plate is nothing compared with the crap your kids will load up on, safe in the knowledge that it’s the one time of year that they can get away with eating chocolate brownies for breakfast, with a side order of maple syrup and four cubes of Turkish delight.

At a breakfast buffet, we all treat the first plate as though it were our last, bedazzled by the dark psychology of ‘all you can eat’ to such an extent that even the strictest no-carbs adherents find themselves surreptitiously making cheese and ham sandwiches ‘for lunch’, wrapping them in napkins and stuffing them into their beach bags right under the noses of the waiters. The lunchtime sandwich-making I can live with, but there should be a special place in hell reserved for those who load up on strawberries and leave only the orange slices behind, pooling in minging orangey liquid. Play nice: everybody deserves the strawberries.

Back on track

Shutterstock / Andrea Boullosa

To anyone who fondly remembers traversing Europe on a shoestring in their student days, the latest near-casualty — Interrail — felt particularly harsh. For those with families who couldn’t afford to fund a Gap Yah, the scheme, which the UK has been a part of since 1973, allows anyone to travel inexpensively through 31 European countries, making friends and building memories. I’ll never forget Dave’s youth hostel in Amsterdam, the glorious stench of Venice, the pristine boredom of Geneva (#why?) or subsisting entirely on bread for three weeks, happy as a clam. The UK was due to pull out of the scheme in 2020: happily, as we went to press, the decision had been reversed. Great news for EU visitors wanting to explore Britain, too… if anyone still wants to.

He wears her genes well

James

As hobbies go, obsessing over A-list offspring and close family members is a bit of a niche one but… the heart wants what it wants. See Christy Turlington — my favourite model ever — casually posting on Instagram a photo of her nephew, James. Christy, are you absolutely sure he’s not your son? Or perhaps his mother/father is your identical twin? How else to explain the perfect reproduction of all your features? Whatever: 25-year-old James Turlington, who gave up his major league baseball prospects to concentrate on modelling, is destined to be the next Jon Kortajarena. Or Lucky Blue Smith, if you’re an even younger millennial.

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