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 |
Aimee Jones |
Dear Nicey, Wifey and younger member of staff,
Loving the toast rack icon - bordering on the inspired! The Thermos flask is also a small triumph, but my strongest memories of flask based activities as a child do not include tea. The beaches here in Wales are indeed fantastic, but can be a little nippy even during the summer months. So Mam would often pack a thermos full of hot baked beans along with the sandwiches and whatnots when an outing to the seaside was in the offing - does this go against the Thermos ethos? Also, to return to the toast rack, will this be utilised for other toasted baked goods? I am thinking crumpets, tea cakes and slightly out of season Hot Cross Buns?
Sterling work as ever,
Aimee Jones |
Nicey replies: Firstly, yes I fully expect the new Toast icon to crop up whenever the broader issue of toasting raises its head. This is certainly in keeping with the general bandying around of icons such as the butter icon.
Secondly flasks of hot baked beans sounds utterly fantastic, I would be thinking of having a tee-shirt made that proclaims that you were raised in this way. Hoorah for your Mum and her bean flasks. I would of course still require a flask of tea to wash them down with.
Thirdly at Easter we were sat on a couple of Welsh beaches with our flask. The first attempt was a major disaster, having set out with the younger members of staff to dam up the stream that runs through Merthyr Mawr sand dunes. The stream had dried up, so we struck out for the coast, and anybody who knows the locale will know that this is quite a hike. No matter for I had provisions, or so I thought. On reaching the beach, we had forgotten the Fig Rolls, the Jaffa Cakes and the milk. I tried to console myself with a cup of black tea, which Wifey and Nanny Nicey declined. No, despite the claims of those who like it, black tea is fairly foul (they actually know this but insist that we should all drink it), especially when you really want a proper cup. I tried to amuse myself by attempting to construct a working cigarette lighter from the dozen or so I collected from the shore line, not that I smoke, I just thought it would be a useful survival trick in a sort of useless alternate Ray Mears way. |
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Jonathan Dawson
 Tunnocks Tea Cake Review |
Dear Nicey,
I have been intending to e mail for some time so my thoughts on a number of topics:
I agree with Madam Arnold that a nice cup (or mug) of tea, toast and a sit down all go together rather well and toast eating as previous stated on this site is a wonderful recreation either on its own or when coupled with a mug of tea. I feel it important to add that the best way of eating toast is with butter and not with any form of imitation as this only disappoints. White bread thickly sliced adds to the enjoyment but other breads are acceptable when the recreation has not been well planned in advanced.
Airline tea can be the most disgusting drink in the world and only UK based airlines should be trusted with making a cup of tea. My own favourite BMI know how to make a lovely cup of tea at 36,000 feet and when coming home from the US is one of the things I look forward to on the flight. An added bonus is it is served in china. I have to say that that well known coffee shop chain Starbucks is the only hope of a good drink of tea in America as you can make it yourself, but should be avoided at all costs in the UK and the visits in the US are only in an emergency when I start to pine for home comfort.
I have so enjoyed reading about Tunnocks Tea Cakes. I do believe that the only way to eat a TTC is with reverence, calm and a cup of tea.My mother always taught me not to play with my food so I still have not attempted to blow the inside out mainly as I hate the thought of wasting any of the inside mixture . I do remember from childhood a Snowball which is not a drink made with Advocat but the inside mixture of a Tunnocks Tea cake covered with coconut which to my delight is a Tunnocks product and still available having checked the Tunnocks web site so I am going to hunt a Snowball down now.
With all good wishes
Jonathan |
Nicey replies: An aeroplane icon we do have. |
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Theo |
I suggest, in true Yogi and Booboo style, a picnic basket icon.
The reason is simply that it's nearly summer, which in my house usually means going down to the park and drinking slightly plasticy flavoured tea from a Thermos and feeding ducks with inappropriate chocloate covered snacks.
I'd better stop now, before I get started on ducks again...
Theo |
Nicey replies: I could do a Thermos icon that would be good. Wifey and I love our Thermos, which we use like a teapot throwing a couple of bags just before we need to have some tea. This makes very acceptable tea in very unusual places. |
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Madam Arnold |
Dear Mr Nicey
Please make an icon for dat toast wot me and Dr Toast and other people like to havetea with. When me mam was poor in the 60s, dat tea and dat toast would constitute an entire meal!
So innit about time you acknowledged this. And that.
Fanks.
PS I drew you an illustritive illustration of tea and toast as I realise that this may be an alien, nay, frightening concept for some tea users, but I wanted to bring it out into the open so as to further dat social intergration and let toasties know they've nothin to be ashamed of.
Kind regards,
Madam Arnold
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Nicey replies: OK, I shall give it serious thought. I need one more icon at the same time so that we go from 28 to 30 and it doesn't mess up my nice little rectangle. Suggestions welcome.. |
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John Kemplen
 Tim Tam vs Penguin Review |
Dear Nicey
Having only discovered your wonderful website yesterday, I already find myself penning my second message to you (or strictly speaking I suppose I'm keying it rather than penning it, not that I'm actually speaking, oh shut up John and get on with it). Don't worry, the messages won't keep coming at this rate, I'm just unloading the biscuit-related detritus that has accumulated in my brain with no outlet until now.
I noticed that your feedback contained quite a few references to Arnotts Australian biscuits, which reminded me of a shocking incident that I witnessed a while back. Well, it was shocking to me, though others may just see this as evidence of a very sheltered life.
I was in the throes of a very stressful professional experience involving barristers and cross-examination and some generally pretty hostile characters, but gained considerable comfort from the support of a very helpful and sympathetic backroom team. Until, that is, one Friday afternoon when I returned to our workroom from the interrogation chamber seriously concerned that my professional reputation might not last the weekend and in desperate need of help from my comrades.
Instead of the alert and eager team that I had expected to find, I came upon a scene of utter debauchery, with my colleagues slouched around panting and groaning in a state of post-orgasmic exhaustion. When I finally managed to get some sense out of them, I discovered that one of the team, a feisty young Australian woman, had introduced to the workroom as an end-of-week treat a packet of Arnotts Tim-Tams. She had then instructed her team-mates in a disgusting Antipodean ritual which involved biting off both ends of a Tim-Tam (similar to a Penguin for those who haven't come across them) and using it as a straw through which to drink their c*ff*e (you'll be glad to hear that such depraved characters aren't tea-drinkers). I, of course, as one who steers well clear of unapproved substances and practices, cannot vouch personally for the effects of this behaviour, but I felt it was my duty to warn your readers of its apparently devastating impact on a group of people of previous good character, including one I had previously thought of as particularly strait-laced.
I don't know whether this appalling practice would work with other forms of biscuit or beverage, but I would urge vigilance by parents when they see their offspring sneaking off to their bedrooms surreptitiously clutching Penguins and Coke.
Yours concernedly
John Kemplen |
Nicey replies: Morning John,
Yes we have many graphic accounts of the TimTam slam on NCOTAASD, but none the less it must have been alarming to stumble upon such a scene. The link at the bottom of the Tim Tam review will take you through accounts of people slamming Twix's and Cadburys Fingers in addition to the Ozzy treat. If you choose the little space rocket icon in our search then you'll encounter messages concerning other bizarre biscuit eating techniques, such as blowing through Tunnocks Tea cakes much in the manner of egg collectors emptying eggs of their contents. |
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