It may be the most important meal of the day, but how many of us take the time to enjoy a leisurely breakfast? National Breakfast Week could provide the perfect opportunity

IT'S National Breakfast Week this week. Not to be confused with National Farmhouse Breakfast Week - sausage, bacon, eggs and black pudding, which was in January. Which in turn, presumably, is not to confused with National Vegetarian Week, which is left with the mushrooms, tomato and hash browns later this month.

This week's breakfast celebrations are inspired by Kelloggs, who as well as feeding us bowls full of sugar to start the day, have now managed to cram it all down in a bar which you can eat while running for the bus.

Might play havoc with your digestion but it saves on the washing up.

Breakfasts are getting smaller, quicker, blander. Who eats kedgeree any more? In fact, breakfast is an endangered species. It's probably only the Atkins Diet that has saved bacon and eggs from extinction. And it's not so much to do with diet, but everything to do with time.

Sometimes, I dream of breakfast as in the adverts or old films. Leisurely, civilised, toast racks and hot plates, linen napkins, plenty of papers and pots and pots of fresh coffee...

At the back of a cupboard I have three toast racks. Toast rack? Even on the days I have time to make toast, it never hangs round long enough to sit in a rack. Anyway, breakfast is normally a banana eaten on the hoof when I come back from swimming.

The royal family, apparently, have butter pats with the royal crest on. Stylish or what. Bet they never have to wrestle with those little packs of jam either - the ones that send your knife skidding across the surface and embedding in your thumb. We are all meant to breakfast like kings. It's better for you. British kings, that is. None of this French idea of fobbing you off with a crumby croissant and a bit of jam. Northern Europeans are big on cheese, fish and meat for breakfast.

We had friends who lived on curry. For breakfast they had curry sandwiches. They seemed to thrive on it. I once read that a proper breakfast could make a whole grade's worth of difference to exam candidates so on exam days, force fed my two bacon sandwiches and orange juice. If nothing else, it gave them two more minutes to grab some revision.

On holidays, the most enjoyable meal is often not the posh dinner or the pub lunch, but the hotel breakfast. Whether you have the full monty or just fruit and yoghurt, the best part is being able to sit at leisure over it. Read the papers, plan the day, or just sit back and relax and eat slowly without having to keep checking the time. Bliss.

It's not breakfast we need, not the actual food and drink, but that chance to sit down and get ourselves in the mood for the day. We set ourselves so much to do that our stress levels are soaring when we're hardly out of bed. Ten minutes' quiet could be just what we need.

More toast anyone?

AS if it wasn't enough having an endowment mortgage that's going to be thousands of pounds short.

Last November, Friends Provident ("Life's better with Friends") wrote and said they would sort out my mis-selling claim "in ten weeks."

Six months later, in May, they said it would be "four to six weeks."

Four months later - surprise, surprise - I still haven't heard from them.

On their website, they boast of "Leading edge technology and award winning service." Maybe they'd be better off with an abacus and a new calendar.

MOST cheering news of the week is that plain chocolate is good for you. It even helps prevent heart disease, cancer and strokes. As does red wine.

But if they're so brilliant, why do red wine and chocolate together invariably cause migraine?

Another of Mother Nature's little jokes.

IT'S one of those sums, like converting prices back to old money, that you should never do. It was just that I saw that Cameron Diaz earned £30m last year. And that would pay for about 1,500 nurses.

IT'S certainly worrying that some NHS trusts are so strapped for cash that consultants are being asked to do their own cleaning.

But perhaps not as worrying as if the cleaners were being asked to do operations.

BEST paw forward and get those tails wagging! There's a Doggie Garden Party at Hurworth Grange Community Centre near Darlington on Sunday. It's hosted by Yorkshire Terrier Club Rescue and Re-homing and features all sorts of exhibitions, experts and stalls.

There's also a ten-class novelty dog show with prizes for them all - what I call a proper competition. And I shall be there to judge it - in a totally proper and impartial way, of course.

12 noon- 5pm, Sunday 7th. See you there.

CLUB 18 - 30. Ages or IQ?