..could access the music room, which was equipped with a grand piano and comfortable looking chairs with flower print covers - it probably doubled as a lounge / reception room now that I think about it. Our grandmother was a formidable pianist and we would spend many an evening singing selections from South Pacific and My Fair Lady round the piano. Our grandfather was an accomplished organist and played the church organ on Sunday. I probably got my musical genes from them, although my mother also sang in a choir.
Across the hall was the dark mahogany dining room where we had our very formal evening dinners precisely timed for the Colonel’s arrival home from the office or Lions Club meetings. Everybody had to dress up for these meals, which meant school uniforms for Richard and me and evening dress for the adults. I didn’t always enjoy dinners because I was a picky eater and was compelled to eat things I didn’t really care for.
Unintentionally adding to my discomfort was our grandfather, who had an aura of authority and the knack of making me feel slightly uncomfortable with his judicious application of gentle sarcasm, to which my brother and I were quite unaccustomed, living as we were with our mother and grandmother back in little ol’ Christchurch.
Adjoining the dining room and at the back of the house was the nerve-centre of the entire operation - the kitchen, where we all enjoyed the most fabulous and informal breakfasts known to man, let alone two very young and impressionable boys from the Deep South.
Rolled oats were religiously soaked overnight in a gigantic saucepan to provide six or more hungry bodies with porridgy nutrition – what wasn’t eaten was strewn over the top of a hedge adjacent to the kitchen window for the nourishment of the local bird-life.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. We actually began breakfast with sweet oranges or grapefruit from the orchard, cut in half and segmented with the special segmenting knife (with the curiously bent tip), and then sprinkled with brown sugar. Then came the porridge, also liberally sprinkled with brown sugar (with the occasional lump) or sometimes golden syrup. Or sometimes, naughtily, both.
Then came the endless slices of toast spread with butter and topped with creamed clover honey from a waxed cardboard honey pot – which, if you were lucky, would also have the odd lump that had escaped being creamed.
If you could still muster an appetite, you could then indulge in your choice of eggs served with bacon and accompanied by your choice of hand squeezed orange juice or a cup of tea.
All this dazzling and sumptuous fare happily and chattily served to us by our doting grandmother and her equally doting sister who were so very keen to see us put on some weight or even grow perceptibly, (we were scrupulously measured), before we boarded the DC3 for the bumpy flight back home to Christchurch.

The only remaining relic of this orgy of the senses today is my present role as undisputed Porridge Master here in Mt Waverley. I don’t get to fuss with food much, given that Maria is such a fabulous cook, so I value making this small contribution to our daily well-being.
Porridge aficionados might be interested in my methods. First up, I don’t soak the oats overnight. I get the cheapest oats available – i.e. the no-name brand from Woolworths that you can buy for about a dollar a bag. M actually prefers the taste of these oats to the more fancy and expensive brands you can buy, which, given her high standards, is very rewarding for a cheapskate like me.
I grab a couple of handfuls of oats and put them in the heavy cast-iron saucepan that M hates so much (you can’t win ‘em all), add water and some salt to taste and soak them for no more or less than thirty minutes. I switch on the small hot plate to half way and cook the oats for exactly fifteen minutes.
And that’s it! No need for the pretend quick oats. All done in forty-five minutes. Then for me there’s perhaps a teaspoon full of brown sugar for old-times' sake, some lecithin granules (I think that’s for vitamin B, but it’s so long ago now that I started this habit I’ve forgotten what it was for), a dash of cinnamon and a handful of sultanas. Add a little oat milk and that’s me sorted till 1.00 or even later.
Nowhere near the scale or grandeur of our Auckland breakfasts I have to admit, but a breakfast for our times.