Despite all their promises, eggs on toast are repeatedly failing to change my life.

As a Londoner, there isn’t much I believe in anymore. Not in politicians, chuggers or the property ladder. Not in the Victoria line, or in the TFL announcers who say you shouldn’t get the Victoria Line. Not in people who tell you the cashpoint is out of order, or that they’ll watch your laptop while you go to the loo, or that their swaying pal on the N29 isn’t about to be sick on your shoes.

But like every third millennial with FOMO and an overdraft, I do believe in brunch.

I’m there with the best of them every weekend, packing up my hangover and joining the queue at dawn to coo over runny yolk, chug flat whites and cocktails in stomach-curdling tandem, fall off a banquette trying to get the perfect overhead table photo, and be obediently swept out like old toast crumbs when the waiters need to herd the next lot of hopefuls in.

I brunch like it's a nervous tic. Sometimes I don't even realise I've done it until I come to, an hour later, addled with caffeine and sugar and wiping the avocado smears off my jeans. This morning I pitched up at The Good Egg in Stoke Newington (not to be confused with Bad Egg in Barbican, Egg Break in Notting Hill or West Egg – the fictional town in The Great Gatsby) at 9:40am – a full 20 minutes before it opened – and barely even felt ashamed.

I’ve had brunch in the sky, brunch underground, brunch on a boat, brunch on the beach, a ‘bottomless’ brunch that turned out to be BYOB and brunch that called itself ‘brunch’ but was really just a trough of chilli con carne with an egg floating on top like a life raft. I’ve had Dishoom’s liver keema curry at 9am, Caravan’s jalapeno cornbread at 8am, and a sugar comedown so severe after Duck and Waffle’s duck and waffle that I thought my time had come.

But recently, and I’m sorry if a plate of French toast somewhere dies when I say this, I've been having… doubts. At first I thought it was just acid reflux, but it turned out to be twinges of disillusionment. I’m becoming a brunch agnostic.