On Brunch and Brinner

It is the start of the university tem and the Blog and son are on the long drive west with a car full of electronics, physics text books and enough clean clothes for three months.

Exams start on Tuesday so we've had an end-year break of admirable studiousness. There has been a lot of burning the midnight oil, and real work at a desk which always looks so much more convincing than a sprawl on the bed with a laptop.

We pull off the road in the early afternoon half-way through Somerset to stop for food and refuelling. The All Day Breakfast is a regular part of the road trip, and we discuss whether a breakfast after lunchtime can actually be a brunch. Or whether brunch really should be late morning or midday.

"Brunch is good, but Brinner is even better," my son tells me.

"What's Brinner?"

"It's where you get up so late you've missed lunch and eat breakfast for dinner," he tells me, giving me a new and unwanted insight into his life at university.

We arrive at the student house in Exeter around 4 o'clock to a scene of chaos - one guy in the shower, another wandering around in pyjamas. This one comes out to help us unload the car still in his pyjamas, oblivious to the cold.

These are the scientists of our future. Lawd help us.

(photo: allposters.com)