bad biscuits

I've decided it's safe after all, to eat the biscuits provided by one of our Mobile Library customers, a nursing home.

It's something they do just to be nice; the bus turns up just before afternoon tea time and a woman brings a tray of tea, coffee and biscuits.

The first time I did this bus run, I drank some tea and ate one of their homemade cookies. This resulted in a careful, yet brisk, walk to the toilets at the next stop. I thought it was a coincidence, or perhaps that something I'd had at lunch had been a bit off. The other library staff member who was doing the bus run with me was dieting, so she hadn't been eating their biscuits for weeks - she was fine.

Then it happened again the following week and I knew something was up. I stopped eating the biscuits, and stuck to the tea. Once I stopped eating their biscuits, I stopped having to mince sheepishly to the toilets at the medical clinic an hour later. I checked it out with another workmate. She warned me not to touch their biscuits.

Then something happened a few weeks ago which made me rethink the whole bad-biscuit thing. I had a work-experience schoolgirl on board for the afternoon. I forgot to warn her about the biscuits. She ate two of their Mallowpuffs (that's a big marshmallow on a biscuit, covered in chocolate). I watched her really carefully, waiting for a change of complexion or a desperate urge to get off the bus....but no. Nothing happened to her at all. So I had one. And I was fine.

Since then I've been scoffing their afternoon tea biscuits without physical discomfort. Perhaps it was only the homemade ones and the stale ones. So it's safe after all...I think.

(Update on my cold - like you really wanted to know - I'm a little tired of sounding like a drowned man when I talk.)