Wedding Eggs
Breakfast today was exciting, in that it was the morning of my wedding.
Collected by my best man and whisked to the local Premier Inn for a celebratory breakfast buffet. Obviously my nerves were at an all time high. Because of the wedding? No, don’t be ridiculous, I’m marrying my soulmate, what’s to be nervous about? No, the nerves are because we’re here to have breakfast without previously having stayed in the hotel the night before.
This was my first ever pre-meditated non-hotel breakfast buffet (PMNHBB) so it deserved a certain level of respect. Thankfully the staff threw all those nerves to one side immediately with their “could not give any less of a shit” attitude. We found our seats and quickly made our way to the buffet selection. Thank goodness we did, because there were only four fried eggs left. ONLY FOUR. Heavens above. I obviously swooped in to grab them all, apologising to my companion as I did so. He merely nodded sagely - one of many good reasons he is my best man, he knows all about the way of the egg - and I continued, thankful for his blessing.
I headed to the conveyor toaster, one of the very few commodities this tiny restaurant had in its impressively small dining area, and set up four slices of white to become not-quite-as-white. Waiting for them to fall, I started to ponder the magnitude of today’s events, yet to unfold; to think about the woman I was going to marry and how much I love her and all the ways- oh the toast is ready, great.
I headed swiftly back to the table, my brand new shoes squeaking on the sticky floor, and took my seat ready to prepare the intended meal. The delicate process of transferring four eggs across to four slices of toast would be tricky, if I weren’t a seasoned breakfast professional. Operation commenced. One. Two. Three. Four. Wait… what happened there? The fork had yolk dripping tellingly from it as I put it back down. I recoiled in horror, an icy cold shiver of shock running through my entire body. Dare I look down? I dared. All looked good. But wait… a tiny sliver of yolk had started to bleed out from one of the eggs, and the donating plate had a small pool of yolk left over where that egg had previously waited so patiently.
What had I done? How could I have been so careless?
The despondent shame hit me like a freight train carrying containers of chewy bacon, and my heart sank. My companion looked on, just as aghast. I could see he wanted to help, somehow, but I waved a polite signal to indicate that I was ok. Trembling, I began to eat. I obviously started with the split yolk bearer, to put it out of its misery as quickly and humanely as possible.
The rest of breakfast was conducted in silence.
At first it seemed like the staff were also taking part, but then we realised in unison that they were just continuing with their usual self-ingrained apathy…
