Calm Before The Guests

I normally have 10 minutes seated here with this view after preparing everything for the guests' breakfast. The whole preparation time which includes boiling eggs, chopping fruit, and setting out all the cold meats and dates and prunes and walnuts and yoghurts and cereals and juices and cleaning the table and setting the places and sweeping the patio and putting on the radio (at a peep) and nipping out for fresh pastries takes about an hour.

The present guests are fine but one (the friend) is a young trainee lawyer and the breakfast routine is a bit like a third degree interrogation! I have had to retrieve all my advocacy skills from a deep wardrobe to contest the enquiries!