In what has been described as a relaxation of the council’s stance on Europe, a Bed and Breakfast in Harold has been licensed to trial the village’s first ‘Continental Breakfast’.
The breakfast comes served in a French style cardboard box and contains some items locals may not have seen before. One example is the juice of oranges, normally reserved as an alternative to the prawn cocktail starter in high-end restaurants, served in a plastic receptacle. In addition to the fruit juice is a muffin, some cornflakes with complimentary milk substitute and a foreign pastry known only as ‘Croissant’.
With no Egg or Bacon in sight, more conservative members of the community believe that serving the breakfast is going one step too far in the bridge building process following the wars, and may even encourage visitors from across the English Channel.
‘Don’t get me wrong, I have no problems with the French when they are in France’ the owner of Clarkson’s Cars told us. ‘I even laughed at the French sitcom ‘Allo ‘Allo, but start offering them their own cuisine and we will be overcome by them’.
However for some, the concept of a breakfast-in-a-box proved a challenging experience. Mr Barker, a guest at the B&B told us he wasn’t sure what was edible and what wasn’t. ‘I took me a little while but eventually I realised it didn’t matter whether I ate the muffin, cornflakes or the box; it all tasted like cardboard.
With the trial set to last a month, the council is hoping the offering of a fine dining breakfast experience will help increase tourism to the local area. Council leader Dave Cummerbund explained ‘if we want to attract people from all corners of the world to visit Harold, then we need to be offering a truly global menu, and so far it’s working.
‘Only last night we had a family stay who were so foreign they could barely speak English. They’d come all the way from a country called Grimsby.’
