Author: James Lark

I have just come across a company called Helapet. Helapet is a leading supplier of disposables to the UK Hospital market. But it occurs to me that it is also the way that Anthony Windram would pronounce “Heliport”.

The biscuits currently sitting in the biscuit box at the office in which I occasionally work are those rectangular sugary ones labelled “Nice”.

Although not my favourite type of biscuit, they really are extremely nice. I had eaten several today when I suddenly stopped and thought, “Why bother to label the biscuits “Nice” when it’s patently obvious to anybody eating them that they are nice?”

For a while I wondered if this was the equivalent of signing for the deaf in orchestral concerts, a description of the biscuit for people unfortunate enough to lack the ability to taste.

Then a more sinister thought occurred to me. Do the makers of this particular brand of biscuit hope that, with the subliminal suggestion that the biscuit will be nice imprinted on the eater’s brain prior to eating, the eater will naturally assume that it is nice without actually bothering to taste it?

Well, thought I. They will not entrap me with any such psychological ploy.

Then I realised that I do think the biscuits are nice. I was munching my way through my seventh for precisely that reason. Alarmed, I wondered if my mind had been twisted by the subliminal suggestions of the innocent-looking writing on the front of the biscuit. Of course, there was the possibility that the biscuits are actually nice, and my taste buds had not been fooled at all. But how to be sure?

I decided to set up an experiment; I prepared three biscuits, one with the word “Nice” on the front as usual, the basic biscuit under scrutiny. Secondly, I took a biscuit of the same brand but scratched the word “Nice” off with a paper clip, to see if that made a difference to the taste. Thirdly, as a control, I had not a biscuit at all but just air.

The air tasted of just air. The unaltered “Nice” biscuit tasted nice. The biscuit with the word “Nice” scratched off it also tasted nice.

What am I to conclude? Have I been exposed to the “Nice” biscuits for too many years to be able to resist the suggestion of the word “Nice” even when it is concealed? Is the taste of the biscuit alone now enough to fool me into enjoying it?

It is a frightening thought that biscuit companies hold such power over consumers.

What I was thinking was, there’s never been a play written about indecent assault in a Post Office. It could be called “You are being held in a queue”.

All too often it was the day where I would be the person who didn’t receive a card and had to make jokes about sending cards to myself.

Which I never did, by the way.

I only ever sent one, in 1996, and I’ve received all of two valentine’s cards in my life. And one of them was a joke, I think.

But what are you supposed to DO, or BUY – I mean, MSN advises you that a nice champagne for under £40 combined with a Will Young CD will do the job, but frankly I’m not sure that’s what I’m after. Think a Will Young CD might just be insulting.

At the end of the day it’s just something else to worry about, isn’t it? Like Mother’s day. How to make your Mother love you more even when it’s no longer convenient to pop down to a newsagents and buy one of the two remaining Telegraphs.

I wish I was like Tony Blair and had other people to deal with it for me.

I’m a bit pissed, by the way, and it’s only 14.33.

Any ideas, though………

Aylett watches Lark
Whilst eating calamari
Squid feeds off coral

As I was cycling into work this morning along a dangerously ice-encrusted cycle path, I observed coming in the opposite direction a gnarled old man wearing a filthy coat and hat and struggling along the same cycle path on a wobbly bicycle from the 1850s. On the same side of the road as me.

i.e. From his point of view, the wrong side of the road.

As this rather disturbing Ealing-comedy-inspired character neared me, he clambered down from his machine and proceeded to push it past me, muttering with a distinctly Scottish accent, “Stupid fucking lunatic”.

I have a feeling that at least one of us was confused.