Breakfast

There are all kinds of things that people forget to tell you about being pregnant. None of them, I hasten to add, are especially bad (probably why they - whoever 'they' are - forget to tell you), they are just odd.

For example, even when the morning sickness fades away into a bad memory, like the longest and baddest hangover you ever had, the race is still on in the morning to eat something - and fast, before you're, err, "overcome". I won't get any more specific because I don't want to put you off your 4pm Twix, which you are no doubt eating right now at your desk.

I don't mind waking up early. I quite like early mornings - the quiet, the sense of smugness, the excuse to have an afternoon nap, the excuse to GO BACK TO BED AT 8PM. But at first I couldn't quite believe that I was expected to get out of bed at 6.30am and go downstairs - trudge trudge trudge - to get myself some cereal, so instead I kept a banana by the bed and ate it as soon as my eyes pinged open and then went back to sleep. But that became gross. And I felt sorry for my husband, who would be caused to have bizarre dreams about being married to a bowl of fruit.

So now I just suck it up and slip out of bed and accept that from now on, for a few years, my day is going to start at about 6am.

Punishment museli alone, which I have written about before, is now out. I need to eat so, so much more in the morning than a bowl of dry flakes splashed with semi-skimmed that I've had to get serious and turn to yoghurt. In London I have three large dollops of whatever yoghurt I've snatched off the shelves at Waitrose, a sprinkling of punishment museli, chopped strawberries (which I keep in the fridge much to my husband's dismay and disgust) and a really generous squeeze of squeezy honey (for convenience. My husband doesn't like this either because the squeezy honey leaks all over the larder, so now I have to keep it on its own little plate. CHUH. Although I ought to point out here that he's been very understanding about other pregnancy stuff like me lying down for most of the day).

I eat it in this witching hour on the sofa, while watching episodes of Season 5 of the West Wing, before my husband gets up and goes to the shops for the papers and a pain au chocolat from the Delice de France stand. Nnnnnnnhhh.

Out in the real France, with two really fantastic greengrocers a few minutes' warm sunny walk away, I get more adventurous with my morning fruit salad and this one below was made from peaches, blueberries, raspberries, yoghurt, museli and squeezy honey. And melon, I think. The squeezy honey in France doesn't seem to leak like the ones in England. I'm on my second bottle.

This picture I just find really funny because it's all moody and thoughtful, but actually it's me eating yet another mini baby bel.