Sunday breakfast

or at least, breakfast detritus.   Of my parents' breakfast, that is - my own toast was consumed hours back.   On Sunday, they have a Weekly Treat - a hardboiled egg each.   I note that the nearest egg is in my Beatrix Potter eggcup from when I was very little - that's Tom Kitten nearest the camera in the foreground.   That was just before I turned allergic to eggs for ten years or so - genuinely allergic, with some embarrassing incidents until my mother at last believed that I wasn't just making a dramatic fuss about something I didn't much like.   I approach eggs quite warily still, unless they can be instantly demolished and mashed into some pinto beans and salsa or into spinach.   

And there's the lid off an almost-empty pot of homemade marmalade (decanted from one of its original jam jars), and the same Spode blue Italian plates that I've known since I was about 3 (did we buy them when we went to Cumberland?   I certainly remember my mother telling me that they were somehow more unusual than blue willow-pattern plates, which is probably true, but on the other hand probably wasn't meant to leave me with the feeling that willow pattern is somehow déclassé).