Thursday, June 12st, 2018
Since the start of operations at the beginning of May, fifty guests plus a few friends have consumed breakfast at Bressenden, and not a single one has opted for a non-dairy, low-fat spread in preference to butter. A couple of decades ago, when it was decreed that eating butter was the best way to clog up your arteries, people eschewed it, and plastic tubs of oily yellow substances replaced butter dishes in every household. Now butter is fashionable once more. If at the end of summer, by which time I should have had at least 100 guests to stay, the percentage of spread eaters is less than, say, 3% I shall have to consider whether it’s actually worth stocking and offering it.
By contrast, white sugar lumps have proved surprisingly popular. They are chosen as frequently as the brown cubes. Guests enjoy delving for lumps to put in their drinks rather than spooning in loose sugar. Perhaps there is something about staying in a B&B that says “Take your time. Relax. You don’t need to rush out to work today. Wait for the sugar to dissolve and enjoy the moment.” A retired dentist from Kentucky who stayed here for six days consumed so many lumps of sugar that I wondered how he still had any teeth, let alone a healthy set. “It’s plaque,” he said, “not sugar per se, that causes caries to develop.” Good news then for those with a sweet tooth, as long as they remember to clean their teeth on leaving the breakfast table.