'Support the Plump TVR 1'

I have just spotted an article in the press entitled "The Importance of Breakfast" and felt that I should introduce my friend Biddercome to any new reader.

The three readers that I have acquired over the past few months since I started this venture, and by the way I sincerely hope that all three of you will soon be up and about again from your confinement in bed, will not be surprised to learn that my very good friend Biddercome has developed a heart murmur.

If my three confidents will indulge me, I will quickly explain to any newcomer that has found my work and who's computer jammed before they could rapidly exit it, that Biddercome is a chunky' middle aged tennis playing companion of mine who is at present undertaking to write a book on the "Full English Breakfast".

This he is doing by eating the said meal of eggs, bacon, sausages, tomatoes, mushrooms, sometimes fried bread, sometimes hash browns, sometimes even black puddings, always toast sometimes with jam and always with copious amounts of strong tea in every establishment that serves this feast throughout a large chunk of Yorkshire, Lancashire and Cumbria then scoring the meal and the eatery that served it.

As this is quite an undertaking and he wishes to complete his writings before the ‘food police’ ban this wholesome cuisine, he has now taken to consuming this meal not only for breakfast but for lunch, dinner and supper as well. This appears to be putting some strain on his cardiac facilities as well as bequeathing him the added side benefit of constipation.

One reason I bring this up is because at present he is undergoing various test and as a precaution has been put on beater blockers. He says that he feels already better having taken them for a week or so but is furious because he cannot compete in motor sport events now that he is on them.

Strangely enough he does actually compete in motor sport events, having indulged himself in Speed Hill Climbing in something called a TVR since he took very early retirement. He has participated in this activity over the past few years along with playing tennis, writing his book, doing an archaeology thesis, cycling through Cuba, visiting Daytona 500, learning garden design, discovering the theatre, inter-railing across Europe, learning to bake bread, hiking around Scotland and fly fishing in Donegal.

I personally blame the inactivity and not the greasy food, for his heart problems.

Now surely a man in the autumn of his years isn't going to do too much damage driving up a hill just because he's taken a heart stabilisation tablet after all the last time I saw him compete, and I use the word loosely, they only just about dispensed with the man walking in front of his car with a flag.

As a fellow sufferer in the cardiac department who is supposed to take a bucket load of medication daily I can appreciate his irritation. I would go into the traumas and background of my triple heart bypass some years ago but I don't want to distress my three bed bound readers at this stage of their recovery, so I will leave that story for another day.

Perhaps when they are all back on solids.

I am seriously considering starting a campaign to get him re instated to his rightful place behind the steering wheel. After all this could be the thin end of the wedge for all ‘breakfast loving motor sport enthusiasts’ as well as a worry to pig farmers throughout Lincolnshire.

I may call the ‘struggle’ ‘Support the plump TVR 1'.

I will get Biddercome’s opinion on what form the protest movement should take when he returns from his white water rafting expedition or his hang gliding course or whatever he has allotted to the gap in his schedule left by over zealous officialdom.

However if this offensive against bureaucracy is to succeed my friend may have to make the odd sacrifice, such as forgoing the fourth breakfast of the day, usually taken just before midnight, to show ‘the powers that be’ that he is actually taking the issue of his healthcare seriously.