The genius of bottomless brunch

I’m rather fond of the many service stations on the M4, since I am convinced they are all named after Jane Austen characters who never made it into the final drafts of the novels. But as an alternative, west of Lord Chieveley and Lady Membury and just east of Sir Leigh Delamere, you can try the Three Trees Farm Shop & Café just south of Junction 15. There is a bank of four car chargers outside, which is what drew me there.

The farm shop is wonderful, with charming staff, and stocked with the kind of high-margin artisanal goods you can buy as presents for the people you are visiting or, better still, for yourself. Moreover, aside from the omission of kedgeree and omelette Arnold Bennett, the café menu pretty much matched my entry for a fantasy league in café menus, should such a thing ever exist.

I’d love to tell you the food was as good in reality as it was on paper. Unfortunately I never got to find out, because the café had closed at 4 p.m. Why do so many places do this?

I love cafés and tea shops more than restaurants. In restaurants you are obliged to eat according to a strict framework, whereas in cafés you can leave your options open. Halfway through a vat of Assam you can suddenly decide: ‘Sod it, I’ll have a toasted teacake.’ But many cafés have a few annoying quirks. One is giving you two small teapots when you ask for a pot of tea for two; the other irritant is often absurd closing times, shutting on random days of the week, or else restricting menu items to arbitrary times.