A quiet word about silence at breakfast

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jan/08/silence-at-breakfast-seb-emina

Version 0 of 1.

My partner has just issued a fascistic diktat. No mobile phones at the table. She doesn't seem to realise I need minute-by-minute updates on Aston Villa's calamitous plummet down the Premier League table, to finess my Paper Toss skills, to decide if I'll need an umbrella and follow Stephanie Flanders' mid-term evisceration of the government's economic performance. But she wants proper conversation, or the nearest approximation to it that an adult male can provide.

Hold on. What's that noise? The radio. Why doesn't the diktat apply to listening to Nicky Campbell or Sarah Mohr-Pietsch? Surely hearing John Humphrys grilling Iain Duncan Smith on the benefits cap is just as inimical to conversation as me looking at my phone and saying "bear with me, bear with …x " while I check podcast updates and she rolls her eyes?

But should we <em>talk</em> over breakfast? Heavens no, argues Seb Emina, author of the Breakfast Bible. "As you eat your bacon and eggs, or porridge, or just some fruit, have the radio on, or read a paper," Emina told Radio 4's Today programme. "If there are other people in the room, don't feel obliged to speak to each other and don't feel offended if the room is completely silent."

Personally, the prospect of silence terrifies rather than offends me. Once, when I went on a retreat to get away from the modern world's infernal yip yap. A silent communal lunch took place to a comedy of nods and winks that made me feel incredibly uncomfortable: indeed, to avoid the existentially deranging abyss of silence is probably why we invented Sarah Montague and TV dinners in the first place.

Emina's idea is that we aren't enjoying breakfast properly. And one reason we aren't is that all the busy distractions of modern life, including conversation, get in the way. My fear is that Emina is legitimising the insane sensibilities of the morning grump who refuses to engage in human interaction until they've had their coffee.

Emina didn't say whether the silent sanctity of breakfast should apply to other meals, but probably not. There are restaurants that focus fastidious foodies by compelling them to eat in the dark, but not, yet, ones that enjoin monkish silence.

It's an interesting thesis, but I would argue the opposite. After hearing what Emina had to say, I got out my phone in defiance of the diktat and Googled "Talleyrand" and "brandy". The French statesman once reprimanded a visitor for swallowing a glass of expensive brandy in a single gulp. "The first thing you should do is take your glass in the palms of your hands and warm it. Then shake it gently, with a circular movement, so that the liquid's perfume is released. Then, raise the glass to the nose and breathe deeply," explained Talleyrand. "And then?" the visitor asked. "And then, sir," continued Talleyrand, "you replace the glass on the table and talk about it."

How very French. And yet how suggestive – maybe all food and drink, if they're worth eating, should provoke conversation rather than be excuses for not speaking. Perhaps that's why we have TV dinners – because the food we're eating while we catch up on Borgen is a disgrace that would only be amplified if we discussed what was wrong with it. Or maybe, worse, having the telly on while we eat solves the problem of the difficulty of being together – of confronting the unbearable silence that underpins conversation. Such are the cultural prophylactics we have built around ourselves. If you're silently reading this at your workstation while jamming a chicken tikka wrap into your gob, you're only proving my point.

Perhaps then my partner's diktat is right. Instead of ignoring her pancakes, I should praise them; she should (and in fact does) microanalyse my coffee. Conversation, not silence, should rule at the breakfast table. It's not only a matter of civility, but of improving the way we eat and live.