Isla could never resist getting the full English breakfast every time she was in London (fuck that dainty “toast and marmalade” shit). No matter what, she had to do it. Stomach consequences be damned. She also didn’t care if it was seen as “too traditional” or “too cliché” (especially for someone who wasn’t really British, but just visiting). Traditions and clichés, after all, exist for a reason. They’re tried and true. Besides that, ordering the full English breakfast while in London was a kind of compulsion to her—as innate as it was for most people to visit the Eiffel Tower when they went to Paris. Granted, most people also only did that just the first time, but Isla repeated such “touristy” behavior every time…though only when she went to London. In each other city she visited more than once, she could deviate from her pattern.

But in London (or anywhere in Britain, for that matter), the full English breakfast was her Eiffel Tower. Her “main attraction” every time. She couldn’t explain it, and long ago stopped trying—to herself or anyone else. She knew that everything about the full English breakfast was wrong. That these items, served individually or with select pairings from the English breakfast grab bag, were fine. But when they were all tossed onto one plate together, the result was obscene…grotesque.

For a long while, she assumed it had been invented by some British man seeking to cure his morning hangover. But, upon further investigation, she found that it didn’t seem to be attributed to any one “innovator,” but rather, had been a staple of the British gentry’s cuisine dating all the way back to the thirteenth century. Although considered “humble” now (even if not priced accordingly), it was, back then, a means to flaunt wealth. So, not a hangover cure…yet.

Isla’s fondness for the breakfast, if truth were really to be told, stemmed from when she had lived in London for a brief four-month stint while doing a semester abroad. She was twenty years old when she first arrived, but she would be twenty-one when she left. Not that it mattered in terms of being able to drink alcohol, what with the Brits generously making their legal drinking age eighteen. And Isla was certain to take advantage of that very important loophole in her drinking education. Back in Chicago, where she was attending college, she despised having to get drunk in dingy dorm rooms with people she couldn’t stand (making her resent even more that she couldn’t legally drink in public places, where she might have been able to “commune with” a more “intriguing” crowd). She loathed them not just because they were hopelessly provincial (leaning into the laughable idea that Chicago was going to make them “cosmopolitan”), but because they had absolutely nothing interesting to say. Not even when they were intoxicated. It was during those many nights spent getting drunk with such ilk that she would often think of the Hemingway quote, “I drink to make other people more interesting.” But all that drinking still couldn’t make them so.

In London, she was drinking the same amount or more, but for different reasons. Namely, she wanted to keep up with the Brits around her. And since “getting pissed” was such a key aspect of British culture, that meant often finding herself blackout drunk at some point during her many nights out while there to “study.” But in contrast to the provincials back in Chicago, she actually enjoyed the conversations she had with the various British students that she ended up accompanying on their “benders” (a.k.a. a standard night out). It was one of these students, Adelaide, who suggested that Isla take up the full English breakfast as a hangover cure, even though no one else she spent her time with seemed to require it. Not even Adelaide, the one who had suggested it in the first place. In fact, that was the first time she experienced the “stigma” surrounding eating a full English breakfast almost every day, her British chums teasing her mercilessly for it. Especially after she started to gain a noticeable amount of weight as a result. That was when she probably should have ceased relying on the full English so heavily (no pun intended). Even though she was also aware that the amount of alcohol she was drinking was yet another factor in contributing to her “stone” increase. That word being yet another “Britishism” she had picked up in the short time she was there.

To temper some of the weight gain without sacrificing not only her most effective cure for hangovers, but also a breakfast she quite simply loved despite how random and disgusting it was, Isla decided she would “halve” the quantity. This meant, for her, ordering the full plate at her pub of choice (she usually switched up the pubs she went to [not wanting to be judged for her addiction], going to a different one in her neighborhood until she exhausted each and had to start the cycle at the first one where she began days prior). The problem was, she tended to linger at the pub, slowly sipping her coffee (the one thing she never did get on board with in Britain was the tea fetish). As such, the server never came to collect her plate, assuming she was still “enjoying” her breakfast leisurely. Inevitably, she started to get tempted, slowly pecking at the leftover half at first, until finally surrendering entirely to the ephemeral joy of eating the whole bloody thing.

Isla would have probably tried to extend her stay/so-called studies in London were it not for this newfound addiction to full English breakfasts. So she tried to look at the English breakfast half-full (even if she couldn’t eat it that way), so to speak, by telling herself that her addiction was what forced her to leave such an expensive country that she likely never would have been able to thrive in as a “right proper” adult. Instead settling for occasional trips back in her adulthood during which she wouldn’t bother with any alcohol consumption, leaving her excessive calorie intake solely for the breakfast she could never forget or fall out of love with. And like true love, the straightforward mantra to explain her obsession was, “The heart wants what it wants.” Or, in this scenario, the stomach does.