Today we shall begin by offering the grandest congratulations to Blackhorn who, following his retirement from the herd, transitioned to a second career that was to prove very successful — a career as a series of excellent steaks and samosas. Blackhorn’s services in this regard provided the inspiration for the topic at hand. Today we are going to ask, what’s up with lunch?

Who or what is lunch: A meal eaten midway through the day, heavier than breakfast and, if done right, far more enjoyable, in that it comes with meat, chips, gravy and posho.

This is not to denigrate breakfast itself — breakfast is fine; it is just not as delicious. We have no problems with breakfast as long as it remembers its place and doesn’t put on airs. As long as it understands that it is merely an early precursor to lunch, here to keep you healthy and strong enough to enjoy lunch. Don’t get any big ideas, like "brunch”. What an abomination.

Pros of lunch:

We have already touched on the preeminent pro, which is that it contains the best food. It is needless to repeat, but shall be repeated anyway. Beef, gravy, posho, chips and other delicious and fattening items are popular components of lunch and this is what establishes the meal’s status as the main purpose of life.

Cons: Vegetables included

A good lunch needs to be complete, adhering to the requirements of what is called a balanced diet, whereby you place vegetables on the plate alongside the fun food. Vegetables are dull but healthy edibles that are only tolerable as accompaniment to something else that is as unhealthy as they are healthy.

Vegetables are, however, necessary because they provide what is called "roughage” or "fibre” which the body uses to facilitate the vital next step after having a good lunch; that is, getting rid of it. I shall not elaborate further because you and I are too classy and refined to discuss toilets in newspapers.

Pros: The PPD

In between the inception of lunch and what we shall call the exception of lunch, for the sake of politeness, there is the intermediate step of PPD, or Post-Prandial Depression. This is a state of drowsiness that comes upon those who have done lunch right and well. I think it is altogether too pleasant a feeling for its name. In the PPD state you are far from depressed. You are calm, proud of yourself and radiating from the literal centre of your being is a feeling of profound satisfaction. In fact this is what proves that we Africans are better at English than the English themselves, because we don’t call it depression. We call it being satisfied. Satisfaction. I would say happy belated Africa Day, but if you have a good lunch, every day is Africa Day.

Pros: The nap

Lunch is followed by the best hour of the day, which is the nap. It is a shame that more offices, restaurants and hosts who invite people over for a meal don’t appreciate this fact, and do nothing to aid in its execution. We hope that in a post-covid world we will have learned to be better. We have become used to taking naps after lunch and so when we return to offices, we expect to have special dormitories supplied on the premises. We expect restaurants to have comfortable pillows for customers to use after eating and, if you invite friends over, lay some mattresses out in the compound for use after the meal.