For the last three years I’ve used January to try and learn something new. Three years ago it was to try 31 days of exercise, two years ago it was 31 days of stretching, last year it was 31 days of learning to play the piano and this year it’s 31 days of… lunch.

The problem with lunchtime is that people have different ideas of when it takes place. To me, lunch has always been 1pm. I think that stems from my first office job having a fixed 1pm to 2pm lunch break. Or, at least I thought it was fixed, in reality everyone had lunch had some point between noon and 2pm and it was entirely flexible, it was just the employment contract that was not.

Even with this flexibility I still had a colleague who thought lunch was at a different time entirely. He would have lunch around 11am. But, because he didn’t want to leave the office and make it look like he was skiving early, nor did he want to eat at his desk, he would often be found eating a sandwich in the men’s toilet.

“Early lunch or late breakfast?”, I’d ask.

“Both,” he would say, using the sandwich in his hand to point to the empty (and just finished) cereal bowl and single serve packet of corn flakes beside him on the bathroom sink.

I always thought that was the strangest lunch/breakfast I’d ever seen until, last week, I discovered one of my colleagues has an even stranger habit. They have breakfast cocktails, which is not as alcoholic as it might first appear.

A breakfast cocktail is when you get a cereal bowl and then fill it first with one cereal, let’s say Rice Krispies, and then you take that bowl and… fill it again with a second entirely different cereal, let’s say Just Start. Then you mix the two together and have them both for breakfast. What freak does that?!

I thought of both of my colleagues today as, through the fact that no one knows the right time for lunch, I had people book meetings at 1130, noon, 1pm and 2pm, completely covering three hours over lunch. So, to eat, I’ve bought a sandwich from Sainsbury’s and I may need to say at some point: “Excuse me, a minute, I’m just going to pop to the toilet.”

Bread: Tuk-IN Kashmiri Chili Chicken in an naan (very nice!)

Ingredient: See above

Taste: convenient

For the last three years I’ve used January to try and learn something new. Three years ago it was to try 31 days of exercise, two years ago it was 31 days of stretching, last year it was 31 days of learning to play the piano and this year it’s 31 days of… lunch.

One of my favourite meals is a proper hot dog from a stall that looks German. Not sure what the stalls nationality has to do with it, but, if the stall has a German flag, or is made to look like a wooden Bavarian hut or is anything but a white formica van in a car park, then I’m sold. It’s authentically German, especially if it calls the sausages ‘wursts’.

Today, I inadvertently recreated a hot dog by buying some sub rolls from Morrisons than making a sandwich to bring to work. I had the rolls, I checked the fridge and I had some slices of Bavarian smoked ham, I had some cheese and I added some tomato chutney. And, after tasting it, I had managed to create a hot dog substitute. The only thing that was missing was mustard. And any sense of German-ness. I should have worn lederhosen.

Bread: Sub roll from Morrisons

Ingredient: Smoked ham, edam and tomato chutney

Taste: like hot

For the last three years I’ve used January to try and learn something new. Three years ago it was to try 31 days of exercise, two years ago it was 31 days of stretching, last year it was 31 days of learning to play the piano and this year it’s 31 days of… lunch.

Post race snacks this way, said the sign. We (Iain TwinBikeRun and I) had just finished the Nigel Barge 10k and were following our stomachs after collecting our finisher’s medals.

I love a good post race buffet. Both the Jimmy Irvine 10K and the Forth Road Bridge 10K have tables and tables of home cooking. This one was not so plentiful but it was varied and, more importantly, it didn’t have a queue.

We helped ourselves to tuna sandwiches (with the crusts already cut off) and selection of sweets before sitting down in a canteen in the Gascube sports centre and witnessing the queue floods open. By the time I eat one corner of my sandwich there were at least 20 people in the queue for food. More kept joining every minute.

“We must have been first and everyone else is just finishing the race,” said Iain TwinBikeRun.

“Were all the people in front of us disqualified and went home early?” I said.

“We must be a the tipping point,” he said.

“Between what?” I asked.

“The athletes who are cooling down and the folk who’s first thought after a race is “Can I now eat a caramel shortcake?”

No need to consider lunch today, it was provided by the race.

Bread: 10k ready

Ingredient: tune and mayonnaise

Taste: like athletic achievement