I sometimes eat breakfast in a cafe in North London.   Once or twice a month I have a meeting near Finsbury Park.  When I do, I eat breakfast at a particular cafe.

Somerset Maugham, the English man of letters, once said “If you want to eat well in England you have to eat breakfast three times a day”.  Indeed breakfast is the one meal that English cafes always (almost always) do well. 

The cafe owner is a quietly handsome man, slight of build, with a friendly face and always a slight smile.  He has dark skin and dark eyes and I guess he is around thirty.  I was told that though he has lived in England most of his life, he and his family came to England as immigrants.  His English is accented but precise. 

He is the cook as well as the owner, always working in the long open kitchen that stretches back from the counter.  His family used to take orders and wait table but now a blonde Polish girl does it. 

His breakfasts are a work of art.  The bacom is moist with just the right amount of crispness, the fried mushrooms plump and free of grease, the eggs fried perfectly with hot yellow yolks, the hash browns crispy and golden, warm and melting on the inside.

Sometimes he multi-tasks, working both the counter and the kitchen.  I wish him a good morning, he smiles and returns his own good morning and asks me what I want to eat. 

We both enjoy our simple exchanges.  He clearly has a definite view of what good manners are and an unspoken expectation that a man should have them.  I have the same expectation and enjoy the cordial politeness of English manners.  I remember the first time I complimented him on his food and he was clearly pleased.  Over time we have built a connection solely around mutual courtesy.

I ate there last week after an absence of two months.  I was surprised when he left the kitchen and personally served me breakfast.  We exchanged good mornings and he then told me how pleased he was to see me and how good it was that I was back in his restaurant.  I was touched by his gesture.  The moment was a gift, to be remembered.

It was the perfect demonstration of the value of manners.  Two men respectfully acknowleding each other, bridging their separate selves with common courtesy.

In London, with its sense of time running out and people consumed by work, good manners and the consideration of others can be a momentary oasis in a desert of anonymity.

Good manners are inseparable from style.