My biscuit nemesis

I started the new year with a workable plan to get healthier. and it's going really well, except for this one thing - I can't resist a biscuit! Especially with my cuppa.

Now, a nice cup of tea, a biscuit and a sit down are one of the best everyday pleasures for a Brit. Bill Bryson, the American travel writer, noticed this. He writes in 'The Road to Little Dribbling',

“ The British really are the only people in the world who become genuinely enlivened when presented with a hot beverage and a small plain biscuit.”

I must admit I'd never realised it until I read that, but he's quite right. At least for my generation and those that have gone before me.

There is even a whole book devoted to tea and biscuits, called 'A Nice Cup of Tea and a Sit Down' by the improbably named Nicey and Wifey (Yep. Really). Saggy gave it to me in a tongue-in-cheek sort of way a few years ago, and it's actually a cracking good read.

But it's not just the nice cup of tea, or even the sit down that is my problem. To quote from the book...
… ‘a nice cuppa while sitting down is the cornerstone of British society, possibly even more important to us than the television or queuing up for things.’

 BUT, (and here’s the thing)…‘Tea without biscuits is a missed opportunity’

A nice cup of tea is just begging for a biscuit to keep it company. That is just the natural order of things. Who am I to go against it?

You see, biscuits have been part of my life since I can remember, and for some reason I find it almost impossible to resist them. Even the plain ones. Especially the plain ones! There’s something so comforting and familiar about the ones you grew up with. Apparently the first words I uttered were “Bickie, Daddy!” I was less than a year old and had crawled across the floor for my first attempt at winding my Dad round my little finger. Mum had said I couldn’t have a biscuit, but even then I was a girl who knew how to get what she wanted. I’m not saying I actually fluttered my eyelashes, but I definitely turned the charm on.

I got my biscuit. 

Recently I vowed to cut out eating between meals, and I can do it! I have done it…except for biscuits. Offer me chocolates and I can say no. Show me a luscious home-made cake, and I will say not for me, thank you. Recently I even resisted a cheese straw my Mum tempted me with – and I love cheese straws! But put a cuppa in my hand and I will sink into a comfy chair with a happy sigh and reach for the biscuits.

That’s the way it’s always been and probably why it’s such a tough habit to break.

As my Tesco biscuit tin so aptly puts it;

If you feel there is something missing in life, it is almost always a biscuit...

Well, a little of what you fancy etc., eh?