Biscuit Tin Quotes

In tiny Denmark the system wasso ingenious that if you knew some dirt about somebody, they also knew something just as bad about you. If it wasn't hushed up, the one person's offense quickly infected the other's. A strange, practical principle that meant that no one would say anything about anyone else, not even if they were caught with their hands in the biscuit tin.

Nina sat down next to Alys. “Would you um … like some tea?” “With honey?” Alys asked. “I, uh … I think we have sugar?” “I only like tea with honey and lemon.” Nina looked like she might tell Alys exactly where she could put her honey and lemon, so Matthias said hurriedly, “How would you like a chocolate biscuit?” “Oh, I love chocolate!” Nina’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t remember saying you could give away my biscuits.” “It’s for a good cause,” Matthias said, retrieving the tin. He’d purchased the biscuits in the hope of getting Nina to eat more. “Besides, you’ve barely touched them.” “I’m saving them for later,” said Nina with a sniff. “And you should not cross me when it comes to sweets.” Jesper nodded. “She’s like a dessert-hoarding dragon.

A towel, it says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have. Partly it has great practical value - you can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapours; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a mini raft down the slow heavy river Moth; wet it for use in hand-to- hand-combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or to avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (a mindboggingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can't see it, it can't see you - daft as a bush, but very ravenous); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough. More importantly, a towel has immense psychological value. For some reason, if a strag (strag: non-hitch hiker) discovers that a hitch hiker has his towel with him, he will automatically assume that he is also in possession of a toothbrush, face flannel, soap, tin of biscuits, flask, compass, map, ball of string, gnat spray, wet weather gear, space suit etc., etc. Furthermore, the strag will then happily lend the hitch hiker any of these or a dozen other items that the hitch hiker might accidentally have "lost". What the strag will think is that any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still knows where his towel is is clearly a man to be reckoned with.

I owe my first inkling of the problem of infinity to a large biscuit tin that was a source of vertiginous mystery during my childhood.

It took me several years of such periods of being alone to learn how to care for myself, at least at table. I came to believe that since nobody else dared feed me as I wished to be fed, I must do it myself, and with as much aplomb as I could muster. Enough of hit-and-miss suppers of tinned soup and boxed biscuits and an occasional egg just because I had failed once more to rate an invitation!

Well?” said Professor McGonagall, rounding on him. “Is this true?” “Is what true?” Harry asked, rather more aggressively than he had intended. “Professor?” he added in an attempt to sound more polite. “Is it true that you shouted at Professor Umbridge?” “Yes,” said Harry. “You called her a liar?” “Yes.” “You told her He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named is back?” “Yes.” Professor McGonagall sat down behind her desk, frowning at Harry. Then she said, “Have a biscuit, Potter.” “Have — what?” “Have a biscuit,” she repeated impatiently, indicating a tartan tin of cookies lying on top of one of the piles of papers on her desk.

If asked in a court of law what happened and what was said, I could only attest to the words “heading,” “stagnating” and “peaceable.” I’d never thought of myself as peaceable—or its opposite—until then. I would also swear to the truth of the biscuit tin; it was burgundy red, with the Queen’s smiling profile on it.

Are there biscuits hidden somewhere? I wouldn’t even know where to look –that’s your mother’s domain,’ he says, heading for the kitchen to first check the USA biscuit tin that we were convinced was a sewing kit. Turns out Mammy had been using it as a kind of double-bluff in her quest to keep anything ‘good’ away from us. A

The women we become after children, she typed, then stopped to adjust the angle of the paper....We change shape, she continued, we buy low-heeled shoes, we cut off our long hair, We begin to carry in our bags half-eaten rusks, a small tractor, a shred of beloved fabric, a plastic doll. We lose muscle tone, sleep, reason, persoective. Our hearts begin to live outside our bodies. They breathe, they eat, they crawl and-look!-they walk, they begin to speak to us. We learn that we must sometimes walk an inch at a time, to stop and examine every stick, every stone, every squashed tin along the way. We get used to not getting where we were going. We learn to darn, perhaps to cook, to patch knees of dungarees. We get used to living with a love that suffuses us, suffocates us, blinds us, controls us. We live, We contemplate our bodies, our stretched skin, those threads of silver around our brows, our strangely enlarged feet. We learn to look less in the mirror. We put our dry-clean-only clothes to the back of the wardrobe. Eventually we throw them away. We school ourselves to stop saying 'shit' and 'damn' and learn to say 'my goodness' and 'heavens above.' We give up smoking, we color our hair, we search the vistas of parks, swimming-pools, libraries, cafes for others of our kind. We know each other by our pushchairs, our sleepless gazes, the beakers we carry. We learn how to cool a fever, ease a cough, the four indicators of meningitis, that one must sometimes push a swing for two hours. We buy biscuit cutters, washable paints, aprons, plastic bowls. We no longer tolerate delayed buses, fighting in the street, smoking in restaurants, sex after midnight, inconsistency, laziness, being cold. We contemplate younger women as they pass us in the street, with their cigarettes, their makeup, their tight-seamed dresses, their tiny handbags, their smooth washed hair, and we turn away, we put down our heads, we keep on pushing the pram up the hill.

Thomas didn't usually mind Thursdays but this had been the sort of day that would eat the last biscuit in the tin and put the lid back on.

More importantly, a towel has immense psychological value. For some reason, if a strag (strag: nonhitchhiker) discovers that a hitchhiker has his towel with him, he will automatically assume that he is also in possession of a toothbrush, washcloth, soap, tin of biscuits, flask, compass, map, ball of string, gnat spray, wet-weather gear, space suit etc., etc. Furthermore, the strag will then happily lend the hitchhiker any of these or a dozen other items that the hitchhiker might accidentally have “lost.” What the strag will think is that any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the Galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through and still know where his towel is, is clearly a man to be reckoned with.

In tiny Denmark the system was so ingenious that if you knew some dirt about somebody, they also knew something just as bad about you. If it wasn't hushed up, the one person's offense quickly infected the other's. A strange, practical principle that meant that no one would say anything about anyone else, not even if they were caught with their hands in the biscuit tin.

he will automatically assume that he is also in possession of a toothbrush, washcloth, soap, tin of biscuits, flask, compass, map, ball of string, gnat spray, wet-weather gear, space suit etc., etc.

C. S. Lewis called it the “inconsolable longing” for we know not what, or Sehnsucht, a German term based on the words das Sehnen (“the yearning”) and sucht (“an obsession or addiction”). Sehnsucht was the animating force of Lewis’s life and career. It was “that unnameable something, desire for which pierces us like a rapier at the smell of bonfire, the sound of wild ducks flying overhead, the title of The Well at the World’s End, the opening lines of ‘Kubla Khan,’ the morning cobwebs in late summer, or the noise of falling waves.” He’d felt it first as a young boy, when his brother brought him a toy garden in the form of an old biscuit tin filled with moss and flowers, and he was overcome by a joyous ache he couldn’t understand, though he would try for the rest of his life to put it into words, to find its source, to seek the company of kindred spirits who’d known the same wondrous “stabs of joy.

But as their journey progressed such interruptions came to seem more and more unreal to Andrews. The reality of their journey lay in the routine detail of bedding down at night, arising in the morning, drinking black coffee from hot tin cups, packing bedrolls upon gradually wearying horses, the monotonous and numbing movement over the prairie that never changed its aspect, the watering of the horses and oxen at noon, the eating of hard biscuit and dried fruit, the resumption of the journey, the fumbling setting up of camp in the darkness, the tasteless quantities of beans and bacon gulped savagely in the flickering darkness, the coffee again, and the bedding down. This came to be a ritual, more and more meaningless as it was repeated, but a ritual which nevertheless gave his life the only shape it now had. It seemed to him that he moved forward laboriously, inch by inch, over the space of the vast prairie; but it seemed that he did not move through time at all, that rather time moved with him, an invisible cloud that hovered about him and clung to him as he went forward.

Rosy’s mummy hands Franny a clear plastic bag full of reject biscuits, then Rosy holds her cheek out for Franny’s wet kiss. Rosy wipes the slime from her face and Franny cackles, then shows them both into the lounge. There on Franny’s coffee table is a biscuit tin with a Christmas picture on the lid. Proper shop-bought biscuits, not factory rejects. “Please, may I have a biscuit?” Rosy says. “Oh, there are no biscuits in that my darling,” Franny says, and pulls the tin from Rosy’s prying fingers. Franny holds open the bag of crumb-speckled chocolate digestives. “Help yourself, my wee hen.” Rosy settles for a reject. Franny puts the Christmas tin up high, way up high, way out of reach.

Miss Mapp had experienced a cruel disappointment last night, though the triumph of this morning had done something to soothe it, for Major Benjy's window had certainly been lit up to a very late hour, and so it was clear that he had not been able, twice in succession, to tear himself away from his diaries, or whatever else detained him, and go to bed at a proper time. Captain Puffin, however, had not sat up late; indeed he must have gone to bed quite unusually early, for his window was dark by half-past nine. To-night, again the position was reversed, and it seemed that Major Benjy was "good" and Captain Puffin was "bad". On the whole, then, there was cause for thankfulness, and as she added a tin of biscuits and two jars of Bovril to her prudent stores, she found herself a conscious sceptic about those Roman roads. Diaries (perhaps) were a little different, for egoism was a more potent force than archæology, and for her part she now definitely believed that Roman roads spelt some form of drink. She was sorry to believe it, but it was her duty to believe something of the kind, and she really did not know what else to believe. She did not go so far as mentally to accuse him of drunkenness, but considering the way he absorbed red-currant fool, it was clear that he was no foe to alcohol and probably watered the Roman roads with it.

The first is itself the memory of a memory. As I stood beside a flowering currant bush on a summer day there suddenly arose in me without warning, and as if from a depth not of years but of centuries, the memory of that earlier morning at the Old House when my brother had brought his toy garden into the nursery. It is difficult to find words strong enough for the sensation which came over me; Milton’s “enormous bliss” of Eden (giving the full, ancient meaning to “enormous”) comes somewhere near it. It was a sensation, of course, of desire; but desire for what? not, certainly, for a biscuit tin filled with moss, nor even (though that came into it) for my own past. ’Ioῦλíανπoθῶ2—and before I knew what I desired, the desire itself was gone, the whole glimpse withdrawn, the world turned commonplace again, or only stirred by a longing for the longing that had just ceased. It had taken only a moment of time; and in a certain sense everything else that had ever happened to me was insignificant in comparison. The

Harriet turned round, and we both saw a girl walking towards us. She was dark-skinned and thin, not veiled but dressed in a sitara, a brightly coloured robe of greens and pinks, and she wore a headscarf of a deep rose colour. In that barren place the vividness of her dress was all the more striking. On her head she balanced a pitcher and in her hand she carried something. As we watched her approach, I saw that she had come from a small house, not much more than a cave, which had been built into the side of the mountain wall that formed the far boundary of the gravel plateau we were standing on. I now saw that the side of the mountain had been terraced in places and that there were a few rows of crops growing on the terraces. Small black and brown goats stepped up and down amongst the rocks with acrobatic grace, chewing the tops of the thorn bushes. As the girl approached she gave a shy smile and said, ‘Salaam alaikum, ’ and we replied, ‘Wa alaikum as salaam, ’ as the sheikh had taught us. She took the pitcher from where it was balanced on her head, kneeled on the ground, and gestured to us to sit. She poured water from the pitcher into two small tin cups, and handed them to us. Then she reached into her robe and drew out a flat package of greaseproof paper from which she withdrew a thin, round piece of bread, almost like a large flat biscuit. She broke off two pieces, and handed one to each of us, and gestured to us to eat and drink. The water and the bread were both delicious. We smiled and mimed our thanks until I remembered the Arabic word, ‘Shukran.’ So we sat together for a while, strangers who could speak no word of each other’s languages, and I marvelled at her simple act. She had seen two people walking in the heat, and so she laid down whatever she had been doing and came to render us a service. Because it was the custom, because her faith told her it was right to do so, because her action was as natural to her as the water that she poured for us. When we declined any further refreshment after a second cup of water she rose to her feet, murmured some word of farewell, and turned and went back to the house she had come from. Harriet and I looked at each other as the girl walked back to her house. ‘That was so…biblical,’ said Harriet. ‘Can you imagine that ever happening at home?’ I asked. She shook her head. ‘That was charity. Giving water to strangers in the desert, where water is so scarce. That was true charity, the charity of poor people giving to the rich.’ In Britain a stranger offering a drink to a thirsty man in a lonely place would be regarded with suspicion. If someone had approached us like that at home, we would probably have assumed they were a little touched or we were going to be asked for money. We might have protected ourselves by being stiff and unfriendly, evasive or even rude.

When things are serious and either Amy Eleni or I need to beat our personal hysteric, the informal code is to seize your head and twist coils of your hair around your fingers and groan, "I'm not mad! I'm not mad! I don't want to die!" And if you have a friend who knows, then the friend grabs her head too and replies, "There's someone inside of me, and she says I must die!" That way it is stupid, and funny, and serious. Our hysteric is the revelation that we refuse to be consoled for all this noise, for all this noise and for the attacks on our softnesses, the loss of sensitivity to my scalp with every batch of box braids. Sometimes we cannot see or hear or breathe because of our fright that this is all our bodies will know. We're scared by the happy, hollow disciple that lines our brains and stomachs if we manage to stop after one biscuit. We need some kind of answer. We need to know what that biscuit-tin discipline is, where it comes from. We need to know whether it's a sign that our bones are turning against the rest of us, whether anyone will help us if our bones win out, or whether the people who should help us will say "You look wonderful!" instead.

I’m not sure what I believe, I say, sharply. No one deserves to go through this. That’s all I know. You’re lovely. I leave the room. I take my rage out on the kettle and cutlery drawer. The nurses can hear me make the tea, fucking London can hear me make the tea. Onto a plate, I pile biscuits that I don’t even feel like eating, and return to his room. How are you with food? I ask him. Not too good right now, he says. These are mine then, I say, and I sit down and place the chocolate bourbons on my lap. You’ll get fat, he says. I am fat, and I lift up my jumper. This wasn’t here yesterday, I say. This is trespassing.

We need more baskets,” Pandora said triumphantly, entering the hall. The twins, who were clearly having a splendid time, had adorned themselves outlandishly. Cassandra was dressed in a green opera cloak with a jeweled feather ornament affixed to her hair. Pandora had tucked a light blue lace parasol beneath one arm, and a pair of lawn tennis rackets beneath the other, and was wearing a flowery diadem headdress that had slipped partially over one eye. “From the looks of it,” Kathleen said, “you’ve done enough shopping already.” Cassandra looked concerned. “Oh, no, we still have at least eighty departments to visit.” Kathleen couldn’t help glancing at Devon, who was trying, without success, to stifle a grin. It was the first time she had seen him truly smile in days. Enthusiastically the girls lugged the baskets to her and began to set objects on the counter in an unwieldy pile…perfumed soaps, powders, pomades, stockings, books, new corset laces and racks of hairpins, artificial flowers, tins of biscuits, licorice pastilles and barley sweets, a metal mesh tea infuser, hosiery tucked in little netted bags, a set of drawing pencils, and a tiny glass bottle filled with bright red liquid. “What is this?” Kathleen asked, picking up the bottle and viewing it suspiciously. “It’s a beautifier,” Pandora said. “Bloom of Rose,” Cassandra chimed in. Kathleen gasped as she realized what it was. “It’s rouge.” She had never even held a container of rouge before. Setting it on the counter, she said firmly, “No.” “But Kathleen--” “No to rouge,” she said, “now and for all time.” “We need to enhance our complexions,” Pandora protested. “It won’t do any harm,” Cassandra chimed in. “The bottle says that Bloom of Rose is ‘delicate and inoffensive’…It’s written right there, you see?” “The comments you would receive if you wore rouge in public would assuredly not be delicate or inoffensive. People would assume you were a fallen woman. Or worse, an actress.” Pandora turned to Devon. “Lord Trenear, what do you think?” “This is one of those times when it’s best for a man to avoid thinking altogether,” he said hastily.

Gray burst into the galley. “Miss Turner is not eating.” The cramped, boxed-in nature of the space, the oppressive heat-it seemed an appropriate place to take this irrational surge of resentment. If only his emotion could dissipate through the ventilation slats as quickly as steam. “And good morning to you, too.” Gabriel wiped his hands on his apron without glancing up. “She’s not eating,” Gray repeated evenly. “She’s wasting away.” He didn’t even realize his knuckled cracked. He flexed his fingers impatiently. “Wasting away?” Gabriel’s face split in a grin as he picked up a mallet and attacked a hunk of salted pork. “Now what makes you say that?” “Her dress no longer fits properly. The neckline of her bodice is too loose.” Gabriel stopped pounding and looked up, meeting Gray’s eyes for the first time since he’d entered the galley. The mocking arch of the old man’s eyebrows had Gray clenching his teeth. They stared at each other for a second. Then Gray blew out his breath and looked away, and Gabriel broke into peals of laughter. “Never thought I’d live to see the day,” the old cook finally said, “when you would complain that a beautiful lady’s bodice was too loose.” “It’s not that she’s a beautiful lady-“ Gabriel looked up sharply. “It’s not merely that she’s a beautiful lady,” Gray amended. “She’s a passenger, and I have a duty to look out for her welfare.” “Wouldn’t that be the captain’s duty?” Gray narrowed his eyes. “And I know my duty well enough,” Gabriel continued. “It’s not as though I’m denying her food, now is it? I’m thinking Miss Turner just isn’t accustomed to the rough living aboard a ship. Used to finer fare, that one.” Gray scowled at the hunk of cured pork under Gabriel’s mallet and the shriveled, sprouted potatoes rolling back and forth with each tilt of the ship. “Is this the noon meal?” “This, and biscuit.” “I’ll order the men to trawl for a fish.” “Wouldn’t that be the captain’s duty?” Gabriel’s tone was sly. Gray wasn’t sure whether the plume of steam swirling through the galley originated for the stove or his ears. He didn’t care for Gabriel’s flippant tone. Neither did he care for the possibility of Miss Turner’s lush curves disappearing when he’d never had any chance to appreciate them. Frustrated beyond all reason, Gray turned to leave, wrenching open the galley door with such force, the hinges creaked in protest. He took a deep breath to compose himself, resolving not to slam the door shut behind him. Gabriel stopped pounding. “Sit down, Gray. Rest your bones.” With another rough sigh, Gray complied. He backed up two paces, slung himself onto a stool, and watched as the cook grabbed a tin cup from a hook on the wall and filled it, drawing a dipper of liquid from a small leather bucket. Then Gabriel set the cup on the table before him. Milk. Gabriel stared it. “For God’s sake, Gabriel. I’m not six years old anymore.” The old man raised his eyebrows. “Well, seeing as how you haven’t outgrown a visit to the kitchen when you’re in a sulk, I thought maybe you’d have a taste for milk yet, too. You did buy the goats.

Vern was a large man, broad shouldered and big bellied, with a double chin, bushy eyebrows, and thinning brown hair slicked flat in one piece with mousse across his beach-ball head. Hannah imagined that if one were able to get a fingernail delicately under an edge of the stiffened hair, it would lift off the top of his head like the lid on a tin of ship’s biscuits.

Take John Constable’s The Cornfield (1826; Fig. 4). A recent exhibition of this work held at the National Gallery in London showed how this revered image of the English countryside has been used on a range of items such as biscuit tins and calendars, as well as for posters and prints.

I found a tin of English chocolate biscuits and decided to have some. Half an hour later, my veins pumping with sugar and caffeine, my brain started to work and I had the brilliant idea of beginning the day by complicating my existence even further, if that was possible.

could have sworn that she saw the tip of Douglas’s tail wag. She left Bomber to his odious sister and tripped downstairs into the bright afternoon sunshine. The last thing she heard as she closed the door behind her was from Portia, in an altogether changed, but still unpleasant, wheedling tone: ‘Now, darling, when are you going to publish my book?’ At the corner of Great Russell Street she stopped for a moment, remembering the man she had smiled at. She hoped that the person he was meeting hadn’t left him waiting for too long. Just then, in amongst the dust and dirt at her feet, the glint of gold and glass caught her eye. She stooped down, rescued the small, round object from the gutter and slipped it safely into her pocket. Chapter 4 It was always the same. Looking down and never turning his face to the sky, he searched the pavements and gutters. His back burned and his eyes watered, full of grit and tears. And then he fell; back through the black into the damp and twisted sheets of his own bed. The dream was always the same. Endlessly searching and never finding the one thing that would finally bring him peace. The house was filled with the deep, soft darkness of a summer night. Anthony swung his weary legs out of bed and sat shrugging the stubborn scraps of dream from his head. He would have to get up. Sleep would not return tonight. He padded down the stairs, their creaking wood echoing his aching bones. No light was needed until he reached the kitchen. He made a pot of tea, finding more comfort in the making than the drinking, and took it through to the study. Pale moonlight skimmed across the edges of the shelves and pooled in the centre of the mahogany table. High on a shelf in the corner, the gold lid of the biscuit tin winked at him as he crossed the room. He took it down carefully and set it in the shimmering circle of light on the table. Of all the things that he had ever found, this troubled him the most. Because it was not a ‘something’ but a ‘someone’; of that he was unreasonably sure. Once again, he removed the lid and inspected the contents, as he had done every day for the past week since bringing it home. He had already repositioned the tin in the study several times, placing it higher up or hidden from sight, but its draw remained irresistible. He couldn’t leave it alone. He dipped his hand into the tin and gently rolled the coarse, grey grains across his fingertips. The memory swept through him, snatching his breath and winding him as surely as any punch to the gut. Once again, he was holding death in his hands. The life they could have had together was a self-harming fantasy in which Anthony rarely indulged. They might have been grandparents by now. Therese had never spoken about wanting children, but then they had both assumed that they had

Have another biscuit,” she said irritably, thrusting the tin at him. “No, thanks,” said Harry coldly. “Don’t be ridiculous,” she snapped. He took one. “Thanks,” he said grudgingly.

And then he would open the biscuit tin and get out the packet of chocolate fingers that was always there and which never ran out because it was a magic tin.

mug of strong tea and gesturing towards a tin of McVitie’s biscuits.

Fust time I've been glad o' a tin o' bully,'' he shouted, exhibiting a flattened tin of preserved meat. "But I s'pose it was the biscuits that was really the shell-proof bit.

No, not synthetic starch and cotton-waste flour-substitute,’ he has insisted. ‘Even though it is more nourishing.’ But when it came to pan-glandular biscuits and vitaminized beef-surrogate, he had not been able to resist the shopman’s persuasion. Looking at the tins now, he bitterly reproached himself for his weakness.

Prospects: a prickly word, a sour betrayer. It was supposed to fill your thoughts with gold, or with clear air and great and lovely distances. Well, the metal came quickly enough to mind, but beards followed shortly, dirt and the deceptions of the desert, biscuits like powdered pumice, tin spoons, stinking mules, clattering cups, stinking water, deceiving air. ... Prospects. They made him think dirt. They made him think rags, snakes, picks, and the murder of companions.

Ryan had read half his book, listened to all his music, eaten two packets of biscuits and an apple, played seventy-two games of Donkey Kong, completing all the levels, and counted every Italian sports car they’d passed in the last hundred miles. Twenty-four hours of groggy sticky travel, twenty-four hours stuck in this overheated tin can on wheels, and he finally knew what it was like to be utterly and unendingly bored. He propped an elbow on the car window frame and stuck his arm out of the opening. Combing his hand through the slipstream, he let the cool air tickle his fingers as he watched the countryside stream past.

Jacob Wainwright was asked to carve an inscription on the large Mvula tree which stands by the place where the body rested, stating the name of Dr. Livingstone and the date of his death, and, before leaving, the men gave strict injunctions to Chitambo to keep the grass cleared away, so as to save it from the bush-fires which annually sweep over the country and destroy so many trees. Besides this, they erected close to the spot two high thick posts, with an equally strong cross-piece, like a lintel and door-posts in form, which they painted thoroughly with the tar that was intended for the boat: this sign they think will remain for a long time from the solidity of the timber. Before parting with Chitambo, they gave him a large tin biscuit-box and some newspapers, which would serve as evidence to all future travellers that a white man had been at his village.

She was crying because she was far from home, and who among us has never wanted to do that? There need be no other reason; just that. We cry for home, and for flowers on tables, and biscuits in little tins, and for mother; and we feel embarrassed, and foolish too, that we should be crying for such things; but we should not feel that way because all of us, in a sense, have strayed from home, and wish to return.

I really am prepared to push Sally for information. I’m dying to know what’s put a huge smile on her face and provoked the introduction of scoop neck tops. ‘What did you get up to at the weekend, Sal?’ I ask casually as I dunk the biscuit tin. I catch her blushing again. I’m definitely onto something here. If she says she’s done a cross-stitch and cleaned the windows, I’ll hang myself.

If I don’t die, we’d need to disappear. For good.’ ‘Choose somewhere warm,’ Gladys said, popping the lid back on her biscuit tin. ‘Why?’ ‘It helps with my arthritis.

When I judged it to be tea-time I sat on an old stone wall and opened my tin of treacle biscuits. As I ate them I could hear mother banging the kettle on the hob and my brothers rattling their tea-cups. The biscuits tasted sweetly of the honeyed squalor of home – still only a dozen miles away.

By dawn, the ship was off Le Havre, and by eight thirty, Wells found himself, swaddled in his newly issued greatcoat, following Sergeant Stubb through the chaotic harbor scene. Hieronymus Bosch could not have done it justice—twisting avenues lined by bales of barbed wire the height of houses, teetering mountains of crates and barrels, whinnying horses and skittish mules, a thousand shouting voices, little French boys begging for a cigarette or a bit of the breakfast the swarms of soldiers had just been issued: tins of bully beef, along with a biscuit as hard and thick as a fist.

Stella looked out at the passing countryside now. It was like England as it is depicted on exported biscuit tins, a country of little valleys and beech copses, of gilded fields and mellow, misted hollows. Green hills rolled evenly, as if they'd been landscaped by Capability Brown, and oak-framed vistas presented themselves for her approval. Even the sheep here appeared to have been shampooed and set. Stella thought that if she'd grown up in Gloucestershire, she might be painting watercolor landscapes and infinitely contemplating variations of green.

Who’s Felicity?” I ask. Monty stills, like a rabbit that’s heard the snap of a twig beneath a hunter’s boot. “What?” “You said your captain sails with Felicity. Who’s she?” “I don’t know. No one.” He looks like he’s going to snatch the pie and make a run for it. I take a step toward the door without meaning to, ready to head him off. “Well, which is it? Who’s Felicity?” “She’s . . .” He tilts his head upward and blows out an exasperated breath. “Damn it, whyyyyy? She’s your sister. That’s the last one of us, I swear,” he adds quickly. I must look stunned, though the news of also having a sister after discovering I have a brother hits less hard. What’s one more? It’s the same logic as finishing off a tin of biscuits when you’ve already eaten half of them, but I try not to dwell on that.

Have another biscuit,’ she said irritably, thrusting the tin at him. ‘No, thanks,’ said Harry coldly. ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ she snapped.

Comptroller," Sally began hurriedly in an oddly strangled voice. "I bring you this Wonder for the Coronation. We, the family Mullin, are honored to be the Keepers of the Coronations Biscuit Tin and as is our bounded duty since Time Began, we now resent this to thee, Oh, Comptroller, for its sacred duty. Safe Journey." - To Sarah

Consider a youthful major named Douglas Haig. Before setting off across the Sudanese desert, he had asked his sister to send him from home “jams, tinned fruits, cocoa, vegetables, haddock in tins, tongue, biscuits, some hock and a bottle or two of brandy,” all of which, along with extra silk underwear, Haig would transport by the three camels that were at his disposal, along with four horses, a donkey, a goat (for milk), a cook, a valet, and various servants to look after the animals.

...the demented clatter-like nuts and bolts trying to escape from a biscuit tin-of the small Citroën van that every farmer drives home at lunchtime...

took my parents for granted, and my nurse was simply warmth, sugar biscuits, hot milk and safety to me. Connie was the first human being outside myself to whom my heart flew out. She was about my own size and wore a blue cashmere frock which, as was usual for baby girls in those days, came down to her feet. Her hair, which was yellow and like the down on a chicken, was cut short like a boy’s, and she had white button boots on her tiny feet. We were both supplied by nurse’s sister with a tin mug and a spoon, and I, copying Connie, walked round and round and round under the big kitchen table, rattling the spoon in the mug. It is difficult to describe the joy of that occasion. From where we stumped round under the table I could see the feet of Rose Francis and her sister pushed into cosy bedroom slippers and stretched out in front of a glowing fire in the kitchen range: I could see the bottom of their big white aprons, and their balls of wool (for they were evidently knitting) rolling down onto the floor from their laps from time to time, to be chased by a kitten who was playing in the hearth. But the superb thing was Connie herself, her fluff of canary hair, her sky-blue dress, her white boots, her odd staggering yet rhythmic gait, and the sound of the spoon rattling in her tin cup. I think that was the one and only time that I ever saw Connie, but I have never forgotten her, and the odd piercing joy of my first conscious awareness of what was, to me at all events, the sheer loveliness of another human being.

All we can really do is to take the revolution a meal at a time. Be the first woman in the office to take a biscuit from the communal tin; be the person brave enough to take the last one, too. In the company of people you feel comfortable with and safe around, eat your heart out. Practise ordering greedily on dates. Be the only person at the table to get a dessert. When it arrives, don't share it. Try out speaking your mind when you're alone -- talk to yourself in the mirror, saying things like 'I would like you to go down on me, and I want the last slice of the strudel.' No doubt some people, probably guys, will be thrown off balance by your forthrightness. Who cares. Eat their leftovers. If they carry on judging you, eat them, too.