WAGS 17.02.2021: By Royal Appointment!

 

Sadly not this Blog, but John wrote to me on the 19th saying:-

"I have had a rush of blood to the head and have written something"! Who am I to discourage rushes of blood if you are lucky enough to have them, so he leads off this blog. He deigned to leave the title to me and, since he had included McVities in his opening speil, I chose a relevant title.

First of all, an Apology - I got it wrong about Nicola Sturgeon .

Last week, I praised her to the skies for her innovative scheme whereby travellers returning to Scotland would be quarantined for 15 days in top, on 

But in fact she has screwed things up. What has actually happened is that her Scottish Government has block-booked 1,300 hotel rooms in Aberdeen, Edinburgh and Glasgow and has had to pay for them up-front – the Scottish hotel industry are not suckers - estimated about £2 million.

And, surprise, surprise, people are not actually flocking to Scotland at the moment. Apparently only 14 people are in hotel quarantine there currently. 1,286 rooms paid for by the aforesaid taxpayer and Sturgeon left hoping that her 14 guests will pay her back.

So, sorry that my praise for her was unjustified. I also said that she was wasted on the Scottish stage and should head for the Westminster Parliament where her talents would be better used and appreciated. But I stand by that recommendation. Since when has sheer incompetence been a bar to success in that environment. It usually leads to promotion and more promotion.

And now a Warning.

With that apology out of the way, I can now turn to matters gustatory and dietetic, i.e. to do with food. This week I have been looking into the history of the every day digestive biscuit. I was encouraged to do this when my attention was drawn to an article in the Manchester Evening News which reported a scurrilous claim on something called Tik Tok that that biscuit´s ingredients include sodium bicarbonate which can be a laxative.

The first digestive biscuit was developed by two Scottish doctors in 1839, thus joining the impressive list of inventions and discoveries by Scots including telephone, television, Mackintosh raincoat, bicycle, pneumatic tyres, animal cloning, penicillin, insulin, logarithms, etc. etc, etc. (see en.m.wikipedia.org). Their idea was to introduce fibre into the diet. The source of their fibre then was probably oats. Dr Johnson in his Dictionary of the English Language had of course defined oats as “A grain which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people.” He went on to say to his friend James Boswell “In England we wouldn´t think of eating oats. We only feed them to Horses.” Boswell´s reply to this sneer is worth noting: “Aye, Sir, and that´s why England has such fine horses, and Scotland such fine people.”

Be that as it may, perhaps the most popular brand of digestive biscuit is McVities of Edinburgh, who developed their recipe in about 1892. McVities eventually got absorbed into United Biscuits which in turn has now disappeared in something called Yildiz Holdings. But the digestive biscuit carries on.

In Edinburgh, when I was young, McVities used to run a high class tearooms on Princes Street where the posh ladies used to convene for their cream teas. They would come down on the tram from Morningside and, among other things, would talk about “sex” - you know, the things you put your rubbish out in. (An old Edinburgh joke about Edinburgh accents which Antje probably knows.) Clue: bags for your lixo.). The tearooms are now a Carphone Warehouse or some such outlet.

The ladies probably indulged in a digestive or two, but would they dunk them in their tea? I doubt it, not in those days of behaving politely in public. Anyway, dieticians have rubbished the idea that sodium bicarbonate would have had a laxative effect, since it would have been in minute quantities and baked thoroughly to boot. So, my Warning is not about eating digestive biscuits. Indeed not; buy them and eat them and dunk them as much as you want, but

                                Do not order them from Walmart

If you were to order 8.8 ounces of McVities´ digestives from Walmart, it would cost you $46.99 plus $11.99 delivery. Don´t go to Check Out. You have been warned. Stick to Continente.

And there we are, a paeon to Scot's inventiveness.  I am still scratching round for anything of interest, so I might as well add my 5 biscuits worth and add a touch of colour in the way of graphical splendour. Here are relevant extracts from the McVities timeline:

Often imitated, but seldom surpassed....

Not the creator of the Scotch whisky.....

By Royal Appointment King George Vth was partial to a biscuit - and a little bit of butter to his bread.

One of the greatest legal battles in Biscuit History

In 1947 McVities got the nod to make their 2nd Royal Wedding Cake. King Edward VIII's cake in 1937 was probably made by a German baker but was by no means as grand as Queen Elizabeth's. However, a piece of the 1937 cake was  auctioned at Sotheby's in 1998 and achieved more than $29,000!

A piece o'cake!! Only $29,000 and still uneaten after 84 years!

Britain's favourite McVities dunking biscuit 2004

In fact, if you are British, you have probably had many different types of McVities. Here is the current range, many of which are available in The Overseas Supermarket:-

And there you are - a potted history of walking biscuits. As you can guess I am rather partial to a biscuit or two with my morning or afternoon tea as are the Kings and Queens of England.

      My Scottish advisor warned me off buying from Walmart USA, but that is never a consideration. I am sure he can justify the figure he put on the Walmart biscuits, but as I always tend to try and corroborate any information from the Hope Household (They both use the same email address often!), I checked and found them at the reduced special offer price of $14.29 (from $22.04 for 400 gm with free delivery! Still exorbitant, bit it takes a canny Scots biscuit salesman to maximise his profits when given the opportunity. 

       As a poor pensioner, I tend to buy the House of Lancaster (25 years of Quality Broken Biscuits), broken biscuits 1.3 kg in a stout cardboard box so as not to cause further damage (sometimes). 

                            Extra broken Broken Biscuit Assortment

This was the last available box in 'Iceland' (Overseas Supermarket) as their stocks have been severely affected by Brexit (no Pukka Pies, Custard Creams, Cathedral City Cheese nor Yorkshire teabags!). I managed to get a grudging 10% discount from the manageress, when I pointed out that from the packaging the biscuits might be broken - the irony was lost on her, and I will take it up with House of Lancaster, who say on the box, that if not completely satisfied I should contact them!  Incidentally Overseas Supermarket is resourcing much of its stock from the Republic of Ireland, so prepare for price rises      

      Now since there are many of my favourite biscuits usually included in the Broken Biscuits Box,  I did a little research. House of Lancaster was created in 1987 to 'rework' products from Freemans Confectionery. They were appointed Sole National Distributors for Huntley and Palmers in 2009. Huntley and Palmer were the biggest biscuit company in the world from 1822 until the early 1990s. Anyone who was brought up in UK would remember their parents owning a biscuit tin or several from Huntley and Palmers. 

     

Later and earlier biscuit tins

They made a comeback - or the name did , about 2009

  If you are not exhausted by biscuits you may care to look at the  virtual museum of Huntley and Palmers which can be found HERE

  The new incarnation produces many favourites such as Fig Rolls, Milk Mallow Teacakes, Chocolate Olivers, Mini Dippers. mince pies and Luxury Christmas puddings. But they have a way to go before they overtake McVities again.

  So what relevance has the foregoing dissertation have to do with Walking or WAGS? Honestly not a lot, but blog subjects are hard to find and, with only two of us seriously writing, you must expect occasional diversions or distractions.

We often (some of us) walk with a few biscuits in our back packs, but a bag of nuts, crisps or  Granola bars are more common but for your delight, this is what  American Walkers favour.

Now who's for a Chocolate Digestive?

 Rod's Birthday fell on a Wednesday this year, a rare opportunity for a Birthday Walk but alas! He received the inevitable series of wishes on the WAGS main site, and I was hoping someone would have taken on a WAGS Birthday and Anniversary Group, but nothing was forthcoming, not even a c0uple of walk photos

   Monday was the best day for walking in Lagos and in contrast to Friday and the pix in last weeks blog, there was a strong onshore wind whipping up the surf in the sun.

Praia de Patata

Marina Entrance

Another view.

Wednesday was uneventful except for some exchanges on the WAGS Gourmet Sub-group on WhatsApp.

       By Thursday the wind had dropped, and we were faced with a mysterious mist on our daily perambulation.

Looking down the seaward side of the Avenida

The Good Ship Esperança, moored near the Harbour Masters Office

To finish a little Country ditty, which may be the saddest Country song ever written. By Jimmy Dean.

Post script from Silves.

Back to biscuits, one more time, Ah! memories, Huntly and Palmers

and broken biscuits. In  the old days, biscuits came in large square tins from which the grocers (remember them?) would take out the amount you wanted by weight. Inevitably, some biscuits got broken inside the tin but these were not thrown away but kept in the back of the shop until some economically-minded housewife would ask for 6 ounces or so of broken biscuits, half the price and all sorts of varieties.

Now, don´t ever get the impression that the British are not serious about their biscuits. Just the other day, under FOI (The Freedom of Information Act), some earnest-minded soul made a request for information about government expenditure on biscuits; not just total expenditure, but for figures broken down into spending on different types of biscuit from Jaffa Cakes, Garibaldis (aka the Squashed Fly Biscuit), Bourbons, Rich Tea, Digestives, through to Custard Creams.

Under FOI, a citizen has  a right to request any recorded information held by a public authority, such as a government department, local council or state school.

That this request was taken seriously leads me to the conclusion that somewhere within the remotest depths of the British Government, most probably in the remotest recesses of the Home Office, there exists a "Desk" or departmental sub-section whose function is to gather and digest the biscuit-eating statistics of all those governmental bodies, from the House of Lords downwards, whose occupants are entitled to free biscuits with their morning and afternoon teas or coffees at the tax-payers´ expense. A secondary conclusion is that every such governmental body must employ a clerk, no doubt in  a junior or beginner´s capacity, to keep a track of the biscuit-eating habits of his or her colleagues AND to submit monthly statistical data thereon to the Home Office.

Of course, what with Covid-19 and working from home, free biscuits at the office will become a thing of the past, a niche job will become redundant, and another  wonderful British tradition - that of the free British Civil Service biscuit - will find itself consigned to the dust heap of history.

Let´s hope that the Great British Biscuit Industry can survive the shock and will not let itself be broken.