BAOBABS AND BREAKFAST

I think that in a past life I must have been a lizard, struggling out into the morning sunshine to throw off the night's torpor, for I feel quite moribund until I have had the benefit of breakfast.

Invariably I am first up and so breakfast alone, white bathrobe around my shoulders, half-listening to the early edition of the Today Programme on Radio 4 while half-catching up on yesterday's papers.

If this seems complicated then at least breakfast is simple and unchanging: tea, made properly with leaves in a pot - my own special blend of Assam and Earl Grey. Next a bowl of porridge, cooked on the hob with milk and demerara sugar, followed by some of Danone's plain Activia Yoghurt, full of micro-bacterial goodness and flavoured with a teaspoonful of Bonne Maman jam, the only jam with exactly the right consistency and strength of flavour to blend perfectly with yoghurt.

With brain and stomach thus stoked I find the energy to commence the day. But don't speak to me a moment before! For as Oscar Wilde once memorably put it, 'Only dull people are bright at breakfast.'

This morning was no exception. I opened yesterday's Times2 to see a picture of a Baobab trees - you know those great African trees that often look like a chimney sweep's brush: great thick trunks topped with a little bit of spiky thatch.

If you've read St Exupéry's beautiful book for children, 'Le Petit Prince,' you will have a fictional view of the Baobab as an evil and invasive weed. The Little Prince who hailed from a tiny planet far out in the Universe had to hunt for germinating Baobab seeds lest they grew into mature trees that would overwhelm his planet.

It's a metaphor, of course, as is the whole delightful book, born from the feverish workings of St Exupéry's mind as he lay dying of thirst after crashing his aeroplane in the Sahara desert. He didn't die, of course, or at least not then, otherwise we should never have had his beautiful 'thank-you' to the world. Improbable as it may seem he was rescued by a passing Bedouin caravan.

But back to the Baobabs. Rather than being the pernicious weed of fantasy the poor Baobab is rather endangered. The Times tells me that an area of 800 acres in Madagascar (now there's a name - Zanzibar is another - to set a child's imagination racing!) has been declared a protected zone in an effort to conserve the ancient trees, supposed to be among the oldest living things on earth.

What!? Only 800 acres - in the whole of Madagascar? I know the country has many problems but you'd think the authorities might be persuaded to do a little better than this. Besides you don't exactly get many Baobabs to the acre, as it were. I think I shall have to raise the matter at the next meeting of our UNESCO committee.

The Times illustrates the conservation effort with a picture of a (rather handsome if you ask me) Madagascan, slim and elegant, walking barefoot along a dirt road beside which a few of the more chimney brush species of Baobabs happen to be growing. In another example of today's lax journalistic standards, the road is described as an avenue, which may be romantic but is hardly accurate.

I would reproduce the picture here if I didn't fear the long reach of News International's copyright men upon my collar, so you'll have to look it up for yourself. Besides our African friend is holding upwards in his right hand, like a miniature candle, that most politically incorrect of all objects - a cigarette, and this would never do.

So I have included a picture of a somewhat fatter species of Baobab culled from the friendly pages of Wikipedia, just in case you were minded to confuse it with an acacia or garden holly.

And just in case, also, you were feeling grumpy - as indeed I was this morning after a virtual and Kafkaesque battle yesterday with my internet service provider and the vacuum cleaner expiring in a cloud of oily black and evil smelling smoke - and so need something to cheer you up, let me conclude with one last Baobab thought - an African legend, according to The Times.

"When the Baobab saw the palm tree, it wanted to be taller, when it saw the flame tree, it was envious for its blossoms. When it saw the fig tree it prayed for fruit. So the gods became angry, pulled it up by its roots and then planted it upside down to keep it quiet."

Poor Baobab! But I fear, it is a lesson to us mingers everywhere. Shut up and enjoy life or you may find yourself planted upside down.