Today, I indulged in one of my favorite vices -- the caff.

A caff is Britain's version of a good diner, a greasy spoon (in a good way) where breakfast is your best bet.

The classic is the full English breakfast: toast, a fried egg or eggs, bacon, sausage, beans and a fried or grilled tomato. Sometimes you can also get fried mushrooms. Today, I went for everything but the tomato and the sausage, accompanied by white coffee (coffee with steamed milk). With the weather as cold as it's been lately, I just couldn't face cold cereal at home. So I indulged. Yum.

A good caff, like Andrew's on Gray's Inn Road just north of Clerkenwell Road, is clean, cheap and friendly.

The caff menu, featuring variations on the above choices, was the inspiration for the famed Monty Python skit "spam, spam, spam."

There's even a Web site devoted to London's great vintage cafe's, callling them "little gems of British vernacular high street design." It's at www.classiccafes.co.uk.