Excellent cookies, PJ Harvey, Blue Ribands and The Big Match
Abundance: Tuesday 27 February 2024
Dad didn’t have a clue about biscuits. Once in a blue moon there would be Penguins - a source of genuine joy: it meant no Blue Ribands, his favourite. A Blue Riband has nothing to recommend it. A Jenga of wafer encased in cheap, pallid chocolate. Chocolate shouldn’t sweat.
Occasionally, if I was ravenous, I might convince myself that this time it would bring a sliver of satisfaction - if only from being less hungry - but no. It gave me one of the few maxims by which I live: never eat a biscuit that floats.
To make matters worse, my sister not only got to live with Mum, she got to live nearer town, nearer school, and got all the good biscuits. At Mum’s, there were Trios and Breakaways1; their house was no stranger to a pack of Uniteds.
Everyone had better biscuits than me and Dad.
My friend Paul was in the same year at primary school. He liked space craft and knew what the letters that followed a car’s name meant: he was very proud that the GL of his family’s car stood for Grand Luxe. They had proper biscuits. I went round one Sunday afternoon to watch The Big Match. His mum brought us squash and a tray of Chocolate Digestives, Wagon Wheels, Viscounts and Mint Clubs. It felt like my birthday and Christmas together. The following Sunday, the same.
Paul’s family were different from everyone I knew in one respect: they were Jehovah’s Witnesses. I didn’t know what this meant, other than it was to do with religion, and Paul told me it included not having an operation if you needed one, which sounded a bit extreme, but still: I didn’t need an operation, I needed biscuits.
‘Dad, I want to be a Jehovah’s Witness.’
‘No, son.’
It felt good to get two words out of him.
‘Dad, you don’t understand…’
‘Why do you want to be a Jehovah’s witness?’
‘I’ve just been to Paul’s and we had a plate of loads of different biscuits, and they do that every Sunday. I thought I could be a Jehovah’s Witness and go and live with them.’
‘It’s a shame, as I was thinking of getting Penguins in the big shop next weekend.’
‘Penguins?’
‘Penguins.’
‘Well, I guess there’s no rush to be a Jehovah’s Witness…’
As I got older, the gap between our biscuits and others’ was demonstrated with every new friendship. Dave moved to our school and like me, loved his punk and new wave. They lived in the new houses at the bottom of the hill. I went there after school to listen to the UK Subs (his) and Buzzcocks (mine). His mum produced a plate of Digestives that she’d iced: I could imagine no greater sophistication. The icing dissolving on the roof of my mouth combined with the crunch was better than anything I’d ever eaten2. It was a long walk home that afternoon.
A few years later, visits to my friend Futch3’s house were enriched with spectacular biscuitry. His mum kept an outstanding biscuit barrel. A biscuit barrel by which all others were measured. She was an early adopter of the Hobnob - plain, milk and dark chocolate half coaters - and the chocolate chip cookie.
It got worse with the arrival of what we thought of as The Glamour Biscuits. Just when we were starting to get used to the idea of chocolate chip cookies - small, excellent rounds studded with nuggets of chocolate and nut - their bodybuilding brethren barged on to the shelves. Rather than maybe 20 two-inch rounds to a packet, you got 8 or so plump, rugged biscuits, each held - in a mark of respect and reverence - separate to its neighbour in a compartmentalised tray. These were biscuits substantial and wide enough to have terrain, to have contours. I’d run my finger over their troughs and ridges, breaking one in half to observe how the chocolate peaks that broke the surface were, like the fillings they cause, even larger beneath.
Of course, we had none. As if compelled to keep himself, and therefore me, eternally a step or two down the biscuit evolutionary ladder, the old man occasionally moved up to an own-brand chocolate chip cookie.
The first thing I bought when I left home was a packet of dark chocolate Hobnobs and I ate every single last bastard one of them myself.