Breakfasts at the Baymont Inn were an interesting affair.

First thing to greet you of a morning is the ever cheerful Laurie.

“Good morning, welcome to Breakfast, how are you today?”

I have never in my life been expecting a welcome to breakfast and I could not have dreamt of it being done with such delight and gusto at 6.30 am.

The breakfast was an array of all things individually wrapped and served on plastic. Laurie took great delight in telling us about everything. Laurie is a talker.

She is from Florida. She has a daughter. Her daughter is a teacher, but not in Florida, in New York, because you can’t afford to be a teacher in Florida. But she only drives a crappy car because there is no point getting a good one in New York, and she has to park it 20 minutes walk away, because there is no parking in Brooklyn. I know this because Laurie is a talker.

Most of the usual suspects were there.

Yoghurts (“oh look at these yoghurts, good brands you know, not cheap. Activia. And the other one Yooooplait, real good”) Porridge (“and the porridge, there’s maple, and pecan, real easy, take a pack for later, snack in your room, why not you paid for it, it’s free”), fruit (“FRUIT! Take one for later”), coffee (“ the red is decaf, that one doesn’t wake you up in the morning you know you stay sleepy, but the black one, woooooooooooo thats strong, its like gas, that will get you going in the morning”) there were baked goods like bagels and muffins (“apparently these are real good, guests love them, I don’t know, I’ve never eaten anything here, I’m not allowed”), make-your-own waffles (“you want me to teach you, I’ll teach you” fair play too, given my attempt at waffles in Iceland where one erupted like INSERT VOLCANO NAME and the other ended up as an undersized square biscuit of the burnt variety that resulted in me being pointed and laughed at across a dining hall, passing the sniggers as I retreated to a howling Conny and the sanctuary of my table, these were sterling efforts)

cereals(“kelloggs…good brand) then shit got weird.

I spotted a slow cooker. With what looked like cooked wholegrain porridge. I enquired as to it’s contents.

“That’s gravy. Pork Gravy.”

Pork gravy, I shit you not! PORK FUCKING GRAVY, WHO ON EARTH DECIDED THIS WAS BREAKFAST FODDER!?!

“You put it on biscuits, and warm it up”

Now by biscuits she means scones. We call biscuits biscuits, they call them cookies. We call scones scones. They call them biscuits. They have scones too, only their scones are cakes. We call cakes cakes. Anyway, I digress.

SCONES AND FUCKING PORK GRAVY??!!! FOR BREAKFAST???!!! WHO COULD EVER THINK SUCH AN UNGODLY CONCOCTION WAS BREAKFAST FODDER?

Americans apparently. Lots of them. They bloody loved it.

And the eggs.

Boiled. Peeled AND INDIVIDUALLY ZIP LOCKED AND PLACED ON ICE! Who does this crazy shit?

Well, despite the oddness, it went down well, and filled a hole, and Laurie is a delightful way to start a morning. Turns out though. Laurie was not appreciated by all. There were many a snide remark from our next door table, but sadly as Laurie’s English was not native and they went over her head. I should have known they would be a bit off though. This couple of bright and perky ladies, probably in their sixties or seventies, all smiles and niceness, gave some classic tell tale signs to their world-view. Given their sporting-gran attire and T-shirts emblazoned with GLORY USA and U S of A we shall call them Glory 1 and Glory 2.

Upon hearing Laurie and I discuss biscuits and gravy (during which I contained all my horror and merely stated I was vegetarian) I heard a balk from Glory 1

“Vegetarian, oh may the good Lord take you soon”

she looks at my beard “I bet you don’t eat pork then either” then Glory 2 chimes in with,

“if you dont eat meat then what else is there?” I look at their meat free plates, then back at them.

“Erm, everything else, vegetables” I stopped listening as she mumbled about a cousin requiring midnight jell-O snacks on account of his not getting enough good stuff from his vegetarian diet.

If that weren’t enough, then they realised I have an accent.

“So you’re British. What do you think about your new Mayor”

I at this point chose not to point out that I am not from London, but from Leek. I don’t even know if Leek still has a mayor. Let alone am I aware of his or her ethnicity. But I see where she is going and say I think Mr Kahn is a good choice. Seems sensible, reason seems to be his MO and he is definitely a voice against the militant branch of Islam and might be exactly what we need to curb some of those voices in their community that lean towards extremism and radicalisation.

Her face screwed. Like a bulldog chewing a wasp.

“Yeah. Good luck with that. I hope for your sakes you’re right”

It’s hard to explain how they managed to deliver this while at all times being polite and smiley and wishing us well on our onward journey. I genuinely think they thought they were being nice. I get the idea they would be still smiling as they wipe their blade clean and they would wish me a good journey as the last burst of blood spurts from my neck, happy that they had sent me to a better place humanely.

The last day with Laurie, I simply said thanks, and told her how nice it was to be greated so warmly and with such verve in the morning and asked for a photo. Clearly this had never happened before. She was visibly moved. She took us to one side and offered us tickets to disneyworld in florida, or anywhere in the world. She has 9 lifetime tickets and offered two to us. Obviously we declined, but really, people must not be overly appreciative of her efforts if thats all it takes.

I look across the dining room. Glory 1 is at the biscuits and gravy station, and notices me “Oh hi you two!” Like she spotted long lost friends “have a great trip!”