Let’s redo lunch

As a young sub-editor on the Times in 1926, Graham Greene, future author of The Quiet American and Brighton Rock, had his meals in the office canteen. Elevenpence bought two kippers, a pot of tea and a slice of syrup roll. Plenty to keep a man going through a long subbing shift.

Is that ‘pot’ of tea not civilised, with its suggestion of several cups, of the ceremony of brewing and pouring? With a hot main and a hot pudding eaten away from one’s typewriter?

Today’s office worker eats al desko. Quick dash to Pret, Eat, Itsu, Leon — it’s as if we haven’t time for more than four letters — for the same sandwich, sushi box or wrap as yesterday. Back to wolf down bacon, lettuce and tomato before a one o’clock meeting. What should be a pleasant pause in the working day is a bad-tempered, hiccupy bolting of just enough calories to get you through to the afternoon tea-run.