Sunday, October 09, 2011

A word about breakfast

Radio 3’s Words & Music has made a welcome move from late night to 6.30pm on Sunday.

Last Sunday’s theme was Breakfast.

It was disappointing that they missed the chance to give an airing to David Cram’s delightful little ditty about bare-footed toast & marmalade.

There was however a reference to bare feet in one of the early poems which was read, but I didn’t catch who it was by.

And we had the unbearably poignant stoicism of ‘We ate our breakfast lying on our backs’ by Wilfrid Wilson Gibson.

Breakfast (1914)

We ate our breakfast lying on our backs
Because the shells were screeching overhead.

I bet a rasher to a loaf of bread
That Hull United would beat Halifax
When Jimmy Stainthorpe played full-back instead
Of Billy Bradford. Ginger raised his head
And cursed, and took the bet, and dropt back dead.

We ate our breakfast lying on our backs
Because the shells were stretching overhead.

Wilfrid Wilson Gibson

The producer was the wonderfully named Peter Meanwell