Breakfast deserves a table

The first piece of toast is eaten while the second is still in the toaster. By the time that one is ready, the coffee needs attention. Then a message arrives, you open it with the knife still in your hand, and breakfast is over without your having visited a chair.

On a working morning, fair enough. Saturday offers a little more scope, although it can take a surprisingly firm decision to use it. There is washing to start and a parcel to collect. Sitting down with a plate may feel like an elaborate preliminary to getting on with the day, particularly if the table has spent the week beneath envelopes and somebody's headphones.

We would clear one place. The whole surface can wait if it must. A chair pulled up to a small patch of timber, a favourite mug and the toast on a plate are enough to begin with. You can eat the second slice while it is still warm. That alone gives the exercise a certain credibility.

Once seated, you notice the things you normally reach past. The yellow butter dish looks particularly good on dark timber, with the ordinary white plates around it. You lift the rounded handle, butter the toast and replace the lid. There is no reason to put the dish straight away; its covered shape looks composed in the middle of the table. One piece in that yellow is plenty. While the coffee brews, you have time to enjoy the glass and chrome of the Chambord too. You might even remember to let it brew before pressing. The selected model holds a litre; Bodum's eight cups are small servings, a detail worth knowing if your preferred mug could accommodate soup.

In a tea household, the kettle has probably already been on twice. Bringing the pot over means the next cup can be poured where you are sitting. The rounded, stone-glazed Sintra looks comfortable among ordinary mugs, especially against the plum wall in our illustration. You pour, put it back within reach and turn to the page you were reading. Breakfast can continue without another journey across the kitchen.

On a more ambitious morning, somebody suggests pancakes. A bowl comes out, flour lands on the worktop and the first attempt confirms that this one is going to be yours. Pouring the next batch from the measuring jug is easier to manage than chasing batter round the rim of a bowl. Later, rinsed and back on the shelf, its embossed woodland pattern is still worth looking at. It need not disappear into a cupboard until the next breakfast involving eggs and optimism.

There is no obligation to reach that stage. The ordinary breakfast deserves its place at the table too, including cereal from a box or toast with the last scrap of marmalade. Buying attractive things for a theoretical brunch and keeping them in a cupboard through the rest of the week seems a particularly roundabout way to improve breakfast.

Eventually the washing will need to go on. For a few minutes, though, you can notice the light on the table, finish what is in the mug and read something longer than a notification. There is butter on the knife and a small scattering of crumbs by your elbow. When you finally get up, the washing-up takes hardly any time. Leave the chair pulled out; you might come back with another cup.