Your ViewsKeep your e-mails pouring in, it's good to know that there are lots of you out there with views and opinions. To help you work out what is what, are now little icons to help you see biscuit related themes. And now you can see at a glance which are the most contested subjects via this graph (requires Flash 6.0 plugin). Please keep your mails coming in to nicey@nicecupofteaandasitdown.com | If you like, you can use this search thingy to find stuff that matches with any of the icons you pick, or use the fantastic free text search, Yay! | Your e-Mails |
Matthew Revell |
Hello Nicey,
I remember the Nescafe heated coffee cans. They were useful on the odd occassion but had two major problems:
1. The chemicals required to heat up the drink took so much space that there was hardly any room left for coffee.
2. They contained Nescafe, which is a disgusting coffee and should be banned.
I also heard rumours that the heating chemicals were incredibly environmentally unfriendly.
Also on the subject of vending machines, if you type "110" into the Cadbury's chocolate machines on Tube station platforms, you get a status message. Usually, it's the cheery "OK! No problems", which reminds me of Eddie the on board computer in Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
Matthew.
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Colin Jamieson |
Hello Nicey –
I’ve just been reading all the e-mails on your site – phew, what a lot! It must keep you very busy, so I don’t suppose you have a lot of time to sit down and have a nice cup of tea!
Just thought you’d like to know about “railway tea” – no not that awful stuff that you get on Inter Cities and things, but hot, well–stewed stuff that we steam railway volunteers drink. I work on steam locomotives on the Bluebell Railway in Sussex, and we always take “a brew” with us when on duty (that’s after we’ve drunk gallons of the stuff in the locomen’s lobby beforehand). We have special enamelled tea cans that sit on a shelf, thoughtfully provided specially for the purpose, above the firehole door, which keeps the tea hot (very hot!). Of course, it gets well stewed after an hour or so, and you can stand a spoon up in it (well, nearly – I lied about that just to emphasise how strong it gets!). Can you believe that some chaps (and probably some of the girls) actually leave the tea bags in all day? – just think what that that must do for your constitution!
Biscuits taste really good when held with oily/coaly fingers, and then consumed – nothing like a black fingerprint on your Rich Teas or Gingernuts!
Why don’t you come down some time and sample the delights of a heady brew of railway tea? – it will knock your socks off and put some lead in your pencil!
On the subject of milk (which we weren’t, but we are now), how can people adulterate their tea with anything other than full fat milk? That awful skimmed and semi-skimmed stuff should be banned (and should have a health warning on it, too).
Happy dunking,
Colin Jamieson |
Nicey replies: Well actually I quite like semi-skimmed in my tea, but if you are going to drink seriously stewed tea as a matter of preference then full fat is the what's needed for that proper greasy finish. When my good friends Andy and Louise walked to the base camp of K2 their sherpa guides liked to brew up tea with lumps of butter in it. |
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Mrs Liveinabin |
Hi nicey,
Just thought I would mention that cans of self heating coffee went on sale in the midlands about 2 years ago. I picked some up at a service station on the M6. I never saw them again and contacted Nestle to find out why. Well they trialed them there and decided not to sell them here. Shame they would have been useful on a fishing trip.
Kate
Mrs Liveinabin |
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Duncan Chew |
Dear Nicey,
I feel I must write to warn your readers of a terrifying ordeal I have just suffered at the hands of some (very) cheap biscuits. I have just purchased the aformentioned box of biscuits for 99p in our local "cheap" shop, I know a whole box of biccies for 99p is a bit too cheap, but I was swayed by the gaudy photographs on the box. There is a total of 310 grammes of the offending articles inside, including strange ring cookies, 'nice' biscuits (with "KARSA" on them), strange round custard creams that are stuck together upside down, brown biccies with white cream (and annoying coconut pieces), and some odd ring types with sesame seeds on them. Hideous. They are all full of air, some of the creme biscuits are just the dry halves with no creme, the whole box just oozes cheap tat. I should point out that they are made "In Instanbul free zone", which should have scared me off, I stupidly thought that however bad they are, that many biccies for that much cash has to be a good deal. They break and disolve into your tea within nanoseconds and even the box is a floppy thin card affair, useless for keeping things in afterwards. Please please please, if anyone is considering buying these biccies, DON'T! You will recognise them from the blue box and oversized badly printed pictures on the front. There is no makers name on the top (they are obviously too ashamed) but they do state "16 varieties"- what they don't say is the 16 varieties are made up of about 5 sorts of biccy in different states of creme, no creme, insipid pale, pale brown, pale cream, not so pale cream etc. Do the right thing, avoid these shoddy imitations and buy a decent packet of ginger nuts.
Yours feeling slightly queasy,
Duncan |
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Jonathan Dean |
Dear Nicey
Following on from the current flurry of vending machine emails I thought people might be interested to hear the latest in vending machine developments over here in Japan.
As many people know Japan is renowned for people working long hours with unwavering dedication to their company and its leaders. This company culture leads people to work 12 to 15 hour days five or more days a week. The end result of this is that a good 30% of people on the train are asleep at any one time. This is a country in clinical need of caffeine, but with little time to drink it.
The Japanese solution to this? Canned tea and coffee of course! Yes! Walk up to any vending machine in Japan (there are 5 million of them at the last count, one for every 24 people or so!) and you will be presented with a selection of canned hot and cold drinks. Drop in 100 yen, about 60p sterling, and out drops a steaming hot can of "Royal Milk Tea" or "Mountain Roast Coffee" in a can.
'Sacrilege!' some may cry! But when you are standing on the platform at Kita Ickibukruo station waiting for the next train to Shibuya, the freezing winds of Western Russia streaming through your overcoat, the hot can vending machine yards away stops being a object of disgust and transforms into an oasis of comfort and warmth. The products in these machines are usually very sweet and slightly clinical, lacking the character and depth of a good, strong, cup of tea, but when there is little else on offer they do fulfil the need for tea.
So do you think this could ever catch on in the west? If you could be sure of a satisfying drink of tea from a can would you buy it? Or is tea too complex a drink to be mass produced in a factory in the back end of nowhere? |
Nicey replies: It all sounds delightfully cyber-punkesque. Hoorah for the Japanese and their hatstand ideas.
Gratuitous link to Oolong the sadly departed head performance rabbit. |
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