The Essay: The Lost Hours

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The Essay: The Lost Hours: Elevenses

Elevenses

The Lost Hours

BBC Radio 3 - The Essay, The Lost Hours, Elevenses

Novelist Andrew Martin makes the case for cherishing our endangered mid-morning ritual.

Novelist and raconteur Andrew Martin muses on the phenomenon of The Lost Hours of the Day. Today, that delightful mid-morning moment of calm: Elevenses

Eleven o’clock in the morning is in danger of becoming a non-time. But there used to be a mid-morning light meal called elevenses. The theory was that one needed sustenance in the middle of the morning - a staging post to luncheon. Andrew Martin investigates its heyday in the nursery, in fiction (where would Paddington and Winnie the Pooh be without their mid-morning snack?) and in the office, and ponders what we lose by letting the busy-ness of modern life erode this comforting morning pause in our busy schedules.

The Lost Hours is a series of essays about how the day used not to be so monolithic; about how it was punctuated by rituals that lent a character to different hours. All the rituals described seem to be in decline, but none can be written off completely. And, a cheering thought, perhaps some will revive post-Covid as we rediscover the social possibilities of our days. They reflect a way of life both more leisured and more regimented, and one of their virtues might be that as well as enriching our days they actually slow them down too, and paradoxically give us more time.

Written and read by Andrew Martin
Produced by Karen Holden

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Andrew Martin muses on how the day used to be punctuated by rituals, now almost lost.

Writer Andrew Martin muses on how the day used to be punctuated by rituals that lent a character to different hours, rituals now almost lost... but perhaps not quite.

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