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Your e-Mails

Trevor Taylor	Nicey Personally, I am glad that PG Tips are losing their train franchise. For some years now I have travelled regularly by train to York and have come to call PG Tips tea bigs "Molly Browns". That is, they are unsinkable. Its almost as if they've made the bags out of waterproof material, so that it can't possibly taste of tea until it is cold. Good luck Tetley and well done for dropping the cartoon dwarfs in your advertising. As a short person myself, I did find it somewhat disrespectful. Take note Lurpak and Homepride, your days of shortism too are numbered. T
Jon Barry Coldwell	Sirs My Grocers inform me that Bath Oliver Biscuits are 'out-of-production' and supplies have ceased. How can this be? Well I note that in recent years they were made by the Jacobs company a manufacturer that was taken over by the food giant Danone. Now, Danone is a French firm. You might say "say no more" and conclude that on the bicentenary of Lord Nelson's victory at Trafalgar they determined to strike a rearguard action against the epicurean heart of Old England. At sea and on the land they could not defeat the stalwart John Bull; resorting to underhand commercial practices they have sought to deprive their old enemy of a culinary masterpiece that has sustained and delighted discerning gentlefolk in this sceptred isle for some two hundred years. Is it time once again for this Nation to to awake from its slumbers and assert itself to curtail the excesses of these continental bullies? I caution against precipitate action. Let us first take up the pen and alert members of parliament and the barons of the media to this outrage with a demand that the shopkeepers of England be once again able to obtain supplies of sustenance made to Dr Oliver's singular recipe. We have a Royal Prince whose own endeavours have delighted the hours of many a biscuit lovers life; would it be a great presumption to humbly beg indulgences that the Duchy seize the day and take over production of the pale delight. Then William's genius could be reborn in even greater glory as the "Royal Bath Oliver Biscuits". Jon Barry Coldwell January 2006
	Nicey replies: Jacob's UK business was acquired by United Biscuits over a year ago. We recently purchased Bath Oliver's in Sainsbury's and Waitrose, I've also seen them in Budgens and some independent stores. If they have taken the step of ceasing production then this must have happened very recently indeed, and it would be a huge pity.
Ben Price	Hello Nicey et al. Although I come from Blighty I have been living for a year now in an awfully hot place called the Sahel, which is to the South West of the Sahara Desert that Michael Palin so memorably crossed on telly. There isn't much to do here, so rather understandably people have resorted to sitting down and drinking tea to pass the time. However, the tea-drinking customs here are so radically different to our own I thought people might appreciate an in-depth report of the process, so here goes... First, there are no chairs to sit on, so we sit on the floor usually with some cushions to make it a bit more comfy. Then a fire is lit in the charcoal brazier on which the tea will be made. For the tea itself (which in Arabic is called ataaya) we use a small metal teapot that could hold one mug full of water, however tea is drunk in small glasses, like you might drink shooters from on a wild night out in Tunbridge Wells. We put three glasses of water and one glass of tea (dark Chinese green tea) in the teapot and place it on the fire. Once it has boiled and stewed for a couple of minutes, the pot is removed from the fire, then a glass full of sugar is added along with a sprig of mint if you've got some. The tea is then poured into two glasses, then back into the pot several times to mix in the sugar, then back on the fire for a couple of minutes to stew the mint. You then take three glasses, fill one with tea, and then pour that tea into the second glass, then from the second glass to the third, and back and forth to produce foam in each glass. The tea is then reheated before serving up and drinking with satisfyingly loud slurping noises. Once everyone has drunk, the mint is removed from the pot, another glass full of sugar and another sprig of mint are placed in with three more glasses of water and the same tea leaves and the whole process is repeated. It is then repeated a third time, again with the same tea leaves, meaning the final glass is very weak and sweet. The whole process usually takes around an hour so that's plenty of sitting down. I've attached a small photo of some ataaya. We don't have biscuits with tea, but we sometimes enjoy a piece of freshly-baked bread which is almost as good. Biscuits are available here, although they're mostly iffy French-style imports. The most promising are called Biscrem, which are dry and hard and flavourless outside but fillied with a sort of chocolatey flavoured somethingortheother that melts in the desert heat. Chocolate on the outside of things is unfortunately a bad idea in these parts. None of the other foreigners here seem to understand why anyone would be interested in a website about sitting down and drinking tea and eating biscuits. Can you imagine? Might I suggest encouraging others from around the world to write and tell about their sitting down and drinking tea customs? Let it never be said that we Brits are not cosmopolitan. Toodle-pip, Ben
	Nicey replies: Ben, Thanks so much for that very useful account of Saharan tea drinking. I bought some of that Green Tea a month or two back just because I thought I should give it a go but found it utterly grim. Bunging in loads of sugar and mint couldn't hurt. Next time we fire up the BBQ maybe I'll try knocking up some desert style tea on it, I'm always looking for something useful to do with the BBQ after all the cooking has died down. Mind you I'll have to keep a look out for a nice second hand metal teapot now.
Mike Armitage	I seem to remember a childrens tv show featuring Mr and Mrs Spoon (and Tina teaspoon) who went to Button Moon. Happy New Year to you all at NCOTAASD Mike Armitage
	Nicey replies: I wonder if any the big Hollywood studios have bought up the film rights to Button Moon. Given what is possible with today's CGI based technology behind such movies as King Kong maybe we have advanced to the state where a truly lifelike and convincing wooden spoon people being waved around through a hole in a black cloth could be achieved. I would happily watch nearly three hours of that, especially as the younger members of staff have toughend me up to such an extent that I can even cope with back to back episodes of the Tweenies with out visible signs of mental anguish.
Mark Smith	Happy new year to you nicey, i am back at work after the festive break and would very much appreciate your advice on a biscuit related matter. i have been talking to people at work about the existence of a blue wafer biscuit (like the evil pink wafer but blue) and they all look at me like i have two heads does this bisuit actually exist or have i been adamantly banging on incorrectly about said biscuit. i also received the ncotaasd book for christmas and am very much enjoying it. thanks in advance mark
	Nicey replies: Mark, I fear you may be right. As I think I mention in the book, I once saw green wafers in one of those 'buy anything for a pound' type of shops, which sell such worrying tat. They may well have been next to some blue ones but my brain may have been unable to cope with the full horror of that, and deep regressive hypnotherapy might be required to extract the image.
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