mostly david ephgrave

I accidentally left my mum’s biscuit barrel in her garden for a fortnight. I didn’t realise this until today, when I went to pick up my mum's dog from the place he stays when she's away on holiday. No sooner had I unlatched the gate than I saw it sitting on the table, slightly damp, almost taunting me for forgetting it. It had been outside for two weeks. That’s fourteen days, or three hundred and thirty six hours, or twenty thousand one hundred and sixty minutes. I could keep breaking up the time into its bare components, but I won’t. Let’s just say it was in the garden for longer than a biscuit barrel should be. A cookie jar isn’t meant to face the elements. It’s not in its remit. That’s what you have a house for: to provide the requisite shelter for your biscuits. You could keep them al fresco for a weekend at most, but I wouldn’t recommend it. As I lifted the lid I feared the worst. What mushy, crumbly horror would be rev...

My office's biscuit barrel currently contains what I would best describe as ‘biscuit detritus’. It’s a sorry state of affairs. There’s nothing good left. I purposely bought a variety pack to keep things interesting, knowing full well that the joy could only last so long . I ate all the best ones in the first few days and now I’m left with the dregs. Transferring the biscuits from the packet to the barrel was tense. There were a lot of different shapes and sizes to fit into a comparatively tight volume. I felt like I was playing Biscuit Tetris. In the cut and thrust of biscuit decanting there will always be casualties; some will be broken while others are fast-tracked straight to Biscuit Heaven (A.K.A. my stomach.) Perhaps I should be more optimistic. The current situation may be uninspiring, but it will improve before long. As soon as I finish off what’s left I can move on to something else. I might even buy some Party Rings; then I can have a party in my mouth.