The notice is brief and to the point.
“Following advice from the Environmental Health Inspector,” it informs, “We will be cooking our yolks hard. If you would prefer a soft yolk please ask.”
There is a man whose job it is to advise roadside trailer cafes how to cook their yolks!!! But we do not have to take his advice. It must be frustrating for him, having all that responsibility but no real power.
I take my bacon and mushroom sandwich and drive off, bidding the ladies a cheerful ‘farewell’. Next time I will get something with a soft yolk, to stick it to the man. The frost sits crisp and heavy as I park up on the Common to devour my breakfast.
The view from here is magnificent. Norfolk is a bit Tamsin Greiggy as a place – it is not what you would call conventionally beautiful, but the more you explore her the more you are likely to find an interesting or unusual bit that is nourishing to the eye. A drop of grease falls into my lap, and I have one of my periodic post-flu coughing fits.
It is one of those views that makes one feel profound. “Please God,” I mutter to the roof of the car. “Make me well again. I’ll cut out all the swearing and the fornication.”
There are no cars or people for miles around; the view goes on forever.
“Most of the fornication,” I clarify.
I finish my sandwich with relish. It has not been a good week for food. Bernard Matthews faces a PR disaster here, with people discovering that his turkeys come from Suffolk after all. And now there is the hard yolk debacle. But there is not much a bacon and mushroom sandwich cannot make better.
Snow is forecast. But I have enough bottled gas, and several shot things in the freezer courtesy of Short Tony and Len the Fish, some of which are almost intact. I gun the car into life and head off unhurriedly back to the warmth of the Cottage.