The Great Heartland Biscuit Thread™

[emilystrange]

[EmmaPeelWannaBe]

Interestingly enough, dunking and boiling is precisely the punishment that we here at the Fundamentalist Unified Church Of Tea-preparation (FUCT) would like to see inflicted upon people who microwave tea. Our shock troops are ready to kick down doors and drag people from their beds in order to make this a Land Fit For Heroes. We storm in, locate the miscreant microwaving tea, shout "We're from FUCT, and you're proper fucked!" and then drag him/her away into an unmarked van.

We welcome volunteers to join our ranks - spiffy uniforms, team-building weekends, and regular socials - also a discount on Fortnum's Tea Of The Month club, so there's that.

Are there tshirts? Something along the line of FUCT me and marry me young?

Of course there'll be t-shirts! What, you think we were like some bands that only put out albums and leave their fans without a stitch to wear?

You'll find them on the merch stand at the conference. We're hoping to get Andrea White to do the Head On The Star holding a steaming cuppa, but that may not happen.

and then there are the bands that sell lots of shirts, but never put out albums.

Slight tangent - etiquette question (I'm seeing a heartland advice column) - what does one do when they are offered a cuppa, and having observed the making of said cuppa, realized that the water wasn't at a full boil!?!?!

[EvilBastard]

and then there are the bands that sell lots of shirts, but never put out albums.

Bands who sell shirts but never put out albums are proper bands - it's very difficult for the yoof, who weren't even born when a particular was released, to demonstrate their street-cred unless they have have a t-shirt that advertises their love for the band. Witness the number of sub-teens wearing Appetite for Destruction t-shirts, or Dark Side, or Zep - you don't see many people walking around wearing Take That or N'Sync shirts, do you? That's because proper bands live on through what the yoof are referring to as "wearables".

Slight tangent - etiquette question (I'm seeing a heartland advice column) - what does one do when they are offered a cuppa, and having observed the making of said cuppa, realized that the water wasn't at a full boil!?!?!

Y'know, if I had a pound for every time this question has shown up in my mailbag here at the FUCT Helpdesk I could retire a rich loris. It's certainly a thorny one, beset with contextual questions: if the tea-maker is, let's say, a young man or lady with whom one has just enjoyed a night of sweaty passion, or perhaps the parents of young man or lady upon whom one has thoughts of the future - is it considered rude to ignore, or to spurn, the tea made with non-boiling water?

There are a number of courses of action open to you. The first requires the ability to lie like a good carpet. "You're going to think this is a bit odd, but since I spent all those years in (pick a country with iffy water quality) I have this irrational fear of drinking water that hasn't been boiled properly. Amoebic dysentery will do that, you know."

The second is to ignore the cup when placed before you, and carry on the conversation as if it wasn't there. Then in 30 minutes or so, you say, "Oh bother - we've been having such a lovely chat I totally forgot about my tea. No no, you sit - I'll go put the kettle on. Can I make you another?"

The third, and arguably the most correct, course of action is to excuse yourself and place a call to your local FUCT Chapter. We have operators standing by 24 hours a day and can dispatch a team of operatives to your location, often in as little as 20 minutes. Certainly, it might cause a little concern when the kinds of people who make the SAS wee themselves crash through the front-room windows, pistol-whip your prospective mother-in-law, throw a hood over her husband, and pole-axe your prospective suitor with the butt of an AK, but consider that you yourself have dodged a bullet - can you imagine marrying into a family that doesn't know how to make tea properly? What other demons are lurking behind that facade? Perhaps they refer to the loo as the toilet, and have one of those crocheted cozies to cover up the spare loo roll? Is there a picture of the husband shaking hands with Margaret Thatcher in the downstairs lav? Has one of them ever said anything like, "It's not that I've got anything against foreigners, but I do think that Nigel Farage is a misunderstood genius" "Say what you like about Trump but at least he's draining the swamp", "Europe - better off out of it, I reckon", or "I've got these lovely Nice biscuits to go with the tea - would you like one?"? This is the kind of thing I'm talking about - poor tea-making is a symptom of a much deeper and more pernicious malaise, and one which you do well to avoid.

Alternatively you could conclude that the tea-maker is mentally incompetent - if you are of a charitable nature you could take it upon yourself to teach them correct tea-making, but for the same reason that many adults eschew virgins on the grounds that you've done your teaching and have now earned the right to have great sex with someone who knows what they're doing and who knows one end of a well-lubricated garden trowel from the other it might be reasonably argued that no-one should be required to teach an adult how to make tea. Thus, claim an urgent appointment (the GU clinic is a good option) and leave. Leave, and never turn around. Delete their number from your phone, change your name, get plastic surgery, whatever it takes to make sure that you never encounter this person again.

Now, obviously this is more difficult if the scenario occurs in the workplace, where a well-meaning if muddle-headed colleague offers to make you a cuppa. In this case the best bet is to accuse him/her of the most vile forms of sexual harassment, report him to Operation Yewtree, whatever it takes to banish him from the office and polite society.

[Charlie]

Dear FUCT representative,

I have in the past come across an unfortunate incident of teabag sloppy seconds (well i assume it was only seconds - goodness knows how many times those bags had been round the block!)
To clarify, the offender was saving up used teabags to re-use for future brews

If i come across this again, should i apply the previous advice on tea offenders or is there any extra special measures which need to be taken to deal with this!

[EvilBastard]

Dear FUCT representative,

I have in the past come across an unfortunate incident of teabag sloppy seconds (well i assume it was only seconds - goodness knows how many times those bags had been round the block!)
To clarify, the offender was saving up used teabags to re-use for future brews

If i come across this again, should i apply the previous advice on tea offenders or is there any extra special measures which need to be taken to deal with this!

Dear Sloppy in Solihull

Thank you for your letter. Yes, you follow the previous advice, although in this instance it sounds as if the offender is a flight risk (reusing teabags suggests saving money, and what better reason to save money than to flee the country?) so if you felt that you wanted to take matters into your own hands by beating him with the biscuit tin until he admitted the error of his ways and promised not to do it again then no court in the land would convict you of GBH.

Yours

FUCT

[Charlie]

Dear FUCT representative,

I have in the past come across an unfortunate incident of teabag sloppy seconds (well i assume it was only seconds - goodness knows how many times those bags had been round the block!)
To clarify, the offender was saving up used teabags to re-use for future brews

If i come across this again, should i apply the previous advice on tea offenders or is there any extra special measures which need to be taken to deal with this!

Dear Sloppy in Solihull

Thank you for your letter. Yes, you follow the previous advice, although in this instance it sounds as if the offender is a flight risk (reusing teabags suggests saving money, and what better reason to save money than to flee the country?) so if you felt that you wanted to take matters into your own hands by beating him with the biscuit tin until he admitted the error of his ways and promised not to do it again then no court in the land would convict you of GBH.

Yours

FUCT

Dear FUCT

Thank you for your sound advice.
Being from Yorkshire myself, i can relate to being tight with finances (although we prefer to call it being thrifty), but there's a line that should never be crossed and re-using teabags is way over it.
So a biscuit tin bashing it is (after precious biscuits have first been removed of course!)

[Microcosmia]

Wow, such well thought out positions on tea! Perhaps we need a tea thread as well?

[EmmaPeelWannaBe]

Dear FUCT,
Does FUCT operate re-education camps? Perhaps ignorance is really to blame. These people may not all be irredeemable. Or am I merely naive, as are so many Sisters fans?

[abridged]

Apparently it's national biscuit day! No dunking at the back there Bob Todd!

[emilystrange]

i haven't got any! it's school holidays!

[Pista]

I have some home made chocolate ones here.
They're still too big to dunk through the ring pull hole in a beer can though

[Charlie]

dunk through the ring pull hole in a beer can

erm.........


For goodness' sake man, get the kettle on!

[Pista]

From the twitters

[Charlie]

From the twitters

[eastmidswhizzkid]

i knew i shouldn't have bothered....

[abridged]

A new Biccies album with the greatest title ever!

http://halfmanhalfbiscuit.uk/new-half-m ... uit-album/

[Charlie]

Have your say, vote for your favourites!

[EmmaPeelWannaBe]

it's nice to see that Nice/Neece Biscuits made the cut.

[EvilBastard]

Apparently Mumsnet is trying to corner the intertubes on the Great Biscuit Debate

[Swinnow]

Lotus Biscoff doing it for me, but they are rubbish with Yorkshire Tea folks

[EvilBastard]

There's a fine spirited discussion going on BTL in Teh Graun regarding what is (and more importantly, what isn't) tea, prompted by Benny "Pengling" Cucumbersandwich asserting that chamomile tea isn't. Some good biscuit-related commentary therein, of you felt like a shufti.

[Pista]

There's a fine spirited discussion going on BTL in Teh Graun regarding what is (and more importantly, what isn't) tea, prompted by Benny "Pengling" Cucumbersandwich asserting that chamomile tea isn't. Some good biscuit-related commentary therein, of you felt like a shufti.

Oh my
Some of the comments are gold.

While we're at it, a grilled cheese with any extra ingredients other than cheese isn't a grilled cheese. It's a f**king melt. Get it right.

You and me's going to have Words. A grilled cheese with bacon is still a grilled cheese. A grilled cheese where other ingredients are in similar proportion to the cheese (ham, corned beef, tuna, for example) is no more a "melt" than my sister's mother-in-law is going to win the All England Friendliness To Foreigners award - it is a toastie.

[markfiend]

A "melt" isn't any kind of food, it's a Scouse word for nobber

Oh and "Grilled cheese"? Give your head a wobble, it's cheese on toast.

[Pista]

Oh and "Grilled cheese"? Give your head a wobble, it's cheese on toast.

Word!

[Swinnow]

Tbh "melt" has largely been replaced by "beaut" in my native tongue. Defo cheese on toast too la.