Wimpy breakfast

Woke up, packed the tent up and got ambushed by a squadron of ducks. But as all I had to offer them was two unopened tins of cider or a cigarette they went off to breakfast elsewhere.

Which didn't solve my problem. Sudbury on a Sunday doesn't much cater for the hungry traveller, and as the supermarket didn't open until 10 o'clock I had to fall back on the local Wimpy.

The last time I went to a Wimpy was when I was about eight. My father used to take me and my younger brother to one after he'd been round to give my mother the maintenance money. In those days it was just a greasy spoon where you could see a bloke flipping burgers. The one in Sudbury is cleaner and smells a bit less but the idea's the same.

So I ordered an enormous breakfast and a cup of rather ersatz coffee and started looking at the map. But I soon got interested in the conversation going on behind me.

Because it was going on behind me, I can't give you much of a description of the two interlocutors. But I soon became an expert in their past history.

Chap number one had served in the Navy during the Second World War. He deplored the behaviour of young men today and, in particular, their drinking habits. What they needed was a good bout of National Service to bring them into line.

Chap number two didn't state his occupation, but made it clear that he was well travelled. He too felt that the young men should drink less, adding that - if they would only work - then asylum-seekers wouldn't come over here and take all the jobs. He was the younger of the two and Irish.

But the dialogue improved as soon as the Naval chap admitted he was hoping to go to Ireland. From then on he said little, and the little he said spurred his companion onto higher and better things.

I wish I had had my notebook with me to get the flavour of the dialogue, but it would need a Joyce to render it anything like I heard it. But, to give you an outline, within ten minutes I heard about the following:

• The potato famine
• How the population never recovered since the above
• The westernmost parish in Europe (nothing between it and America but the Atlantic)
• The Easter Uprising
• Guinness
• Giving up the drink
• The desirability of avoiding Ulster

But as I doubt you'll believe such a list of stereotypes, I'll just ask you to believe me, join me in a post-breakfast cigarette and push off on the second day's walk.