I’ve never eaten a sweet. No joke. Liquorice, love hearts, strawberry lace. Jelly babies, cola bottles, mints. Not one of them has slithered down my gullet. Never hath a gobstopper stoppered my gob. Lollies do not make me jolly. Bon bons are not bon. And don’t even get me started on Haribo. They can’t even decide on a plural. Haribo? Hariboes? Haribi? But it doesn’t even matter when the objects in question look like the faecal matter of Nyan cat. I withdraw my palate from participation. Granted, there was some controversy over a marshmallow back in 2013, but it was all smoothed over. I’m told that my accuser will recover, eventually.
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My associates have their various theories. I call them associates – there’s just no way I could form an attachment to a sweet-sucker strong enough to term ‘friendship.’ Anyway, several associates believe there must have been an early childhood trauma. Despotic health nut parents. Flamboyant allergies. Another refuses to accept it as true, as if being sans-sweeties was some improbably puritanical dystopian nightmare. Most think I maintain a state of swe-libacy simply to annoy them. Which is surprisingly astute. There is also something to be said for the pleasure of hearing cries of shock and despair when you drop the bomb at an ice-breaker session, or on a first date. But the truth is, I just have no need for sweets. Nothing Bassett’s produces could possibly rival the pinnacle of confectionary that is The Biscuit. It is by far the greatest glucose delivery method in existence.
A flatmate tried to shout me down. ‘Cake,’ she said. Her argument may have been slightly more developed, but that was the bare bones of it. ‘Have you ever tried to dunk it in tea?’ I replied. It’s just fundamentally unsuited to the task. You might as well ask Donald Trump to mediate the Middle East peace process. In fact, most problems with cake are also problems with dearest Donald. It’s too rich for its own good; there’s too much of it on TV, and it leaves you feeling mildly ill.
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Unlike the sponge cake, most biscuits are rather well named. A Nice biscuit is nice. Hobnobs are useful for hobnobbing. Shortbreads and Ginger Nuts are endearingly self-deprecating. The blandness of the Rich Tea is a stroke of ironic genius. And if we are talking of masterpieces, then surely the Chocolate Digestive must be a contender for the most effective use of that ingredient ever (measuring in pleasure per gram).
But it’s not all custard creams and rainbows. Beneath the prim Victorian designs there is a bit of crunch. Biscuits breed addiction. I’m surprised there isn’t a rehab clinic. It’s the small portions, they’re fatal. As a vice, raiding the communal biscuit tin is comforting and reasonably harmless. Like the chip you dropped on the kitchen floor and kicked under the cabinet last week. You know it’s bad, but it’s so insignificantly bad that noone will care, or even notice.
Or so you thought. Then you find yourself lying on the kitchen floor, debauched, bloated, groaning beneath a mantle of Bourbon crumbs, your face inches from a decaying mound of chip-based mould. The biscuit tin lies ravaged beside you as you read the note your flatmates have left, how they’re sorry, they just can’t take living with you any longer, they’re moving to Australia.
Oh well. I guess I’ll have to buy my own biscuits now.
