What mummy with 3 hungry children doesn’t pinch from the breakfast buffet!

ACOUPLE of months ago my grown-up daughter treated us to an overnight trip to Barcelona, staying in our favourite five-star hotel.

As you’d imagine, I was thrilled. As she handed me the reservation details, two words stood out on the page making my tastebuds dance with joy: breakfast included.

The dear girl had even underlined them for me. She knows me so well. ‘The breakfast buffet!’ we squealed in unison.

Forget the glorious, architectural chaos of Gaudi’s Basilica, or fresh paella served with a sea breeze in the boardwalk-fronted restaurants, what the two of us were eagerly anticipating was the delight of the morning breakfast selection.

Bowls laden with fresh fruit, golden pastries hot from the oven, fluffy white rolls, eggs cooked any which way, vast platters of continental meats, smoked cheeses and fish, yoghurts, muesli, dainty little pots of marmalade and jam, and crafted curls of unsalted butter on a chilled porcelain dish.

That, to me, is what a holiday is all about. And I’m afraid it brings out the glutton in me — as, it seems, it does in a lot of very well-to-do people.

When the playwright Alan Bennett wrote this week of his disgust at the unbridled greed of fellow guests at a certain Venice restaurant, I had to read the extract twice to ensure he was, definitely, talking about Venice and not Barcelona.

For those gluttons launching themselves at the breakfast buffet that he found so abhorrent, could easily have been me.

‘The greed at breakfast in our hotel is also dispiriting, one young woman this morning with such a passion for fruit that she piles her plate with melon, pineapple, grapes and kiwi fruit and fills her pockets with tangerines to the extent that in the process nature itself is demeaned,’ he wrote.

‘Some of the well-to-do guests can’t wait to get the food back from the breakfast bar to their table, one young man downing a tumbler of orange juice en route and a boy stuffing himself with sausages before he even sits down. Hard to be a waitress at breakfast and retain a respect for one’s fellows.’

SORRY Alan, but I too am guilty of such unseemly behaviour. Although neither poor nor hungry, the sight of all that beautiful, limitless food brings out the hunter gatherer in me.

I cannot get enough of it, like I’m gorging during a season of plenty, anticipating a famine ahead.

During our most recent hotel stay I too pilfered tangerines for later — along with a couple of nectarines and a large plum. I dropped them discreetly into my handbag; a carefully selected, bucket-type design that also had plenty of room for a yoghurt each too. And it wasn’t just me behav- ing like a common thief in a five star hotel — my 18-year- old daughter played her own role.

She snaffled a couple of smoothies and even cleverly rustled up two deli-style sandwiches when it was quiet over at the cured meats and baguette section. ‘Well done you,’ I whispered when she showed me her spoils in a napkin.

Do try not to judge: the poor girl is a product of her upbringing. For as long as she can remember, any time we’ve stayed in a hotel I have always urged her and her two sisters to stuff themselves to the gills at breakfast so we can save money on lunch.

The way I see it, the more upmarket the hotel you book, the better the breakfast spread will be, and the extra money you spend on accommodation will be offset by what you save on not having to fork out for lunch.

During our trip to Barcelona, we spent as much time planning our route around the breakfast buffet as did our excursions around the city.

While she assumes responsibility for cold meat and cheeses, I will be on fruit and muffin duty.

My husband finds my behav- iour distasteful and crass. He harks back to the early days of our relationship when we were too busy gazing into each other’s eyes to have time to think about how much food we might be able to make off with.

But that was before I became a mother and therefore a feeder, with one eye constantly on the lookout for the next decent, free lunch.

Anyone who has traipsed around a hot city, with three hungry children in tow, mewling for a ‘plain cheese sandwich and a strawberry yoghurt without any bits in it’ will sympathise with me.

And I know I’m not alone. One friend makes a game out of sending her four-year-old twin sons to and from the buffet with a list of items to pop in their rucksacks.

Her thinking is that no one is going to challenge a couple of cute infants, even if they are clearly acting under the instructions of their cheapskate mother.

But even I have a capacity for shame. There have been countless occasions when, returning from a foreign holiday, my handbag has been scanned at airport security, only to reveal a mouldering couple of muffins in a hotel napkin, and even on one shameful occasion, a forgotten cold sausage stuck to my hairbrush.

Oh dear. Maybe Alan really does have a point after all.