Written by Gordon Aspey
9 July 2018
The results of my annual Diabetes check required a worrying second visit to the Medical centre. The nurse sat gazing at my file on her laptop.
‘Hmm’ she murmured
‘Your blood sugar levels have risen sharply you need to cut back on the cake and biscuits.’
‘But I hardly eat any, apart from the odd packet of Custard Creams.’ I argued.
I couldn’t tell her how I sacrificed my sylph like figure and well being to prevent my grandchildren from the scourge of the growing Diabetic epidemic. I’d scoff the offending calories before they could lay their hands on them. They are now strapping healthy teenagers without the need for my continued support.
I believe the occasional sacrifice for the benefit of siblings is a good thing in an advanced compassionate society.
‘So how many custard creams do you eat in a week?’ Said the nurse eyeing me doubtfully.
‘Well – er – it varies but not many.’ I mumbled.
She swivelled her laptop round and pointed to a chart. ‘This is what Custard Creams are doing to your blood sugar levels.’
‘Blimey! That looks like the north face of the Eiger, I said.
‘Yes and you are here, at the pinnacle and in grave danger of popping your clogs.’
‘Surely not’ I argued ‘Custard Creams are tiny little biscuits- we are talking mouse bait, they are not like hamburgers or jam doughnuts.’
The nurse waggled her finger into my face showing mild signs of irritation at my defensive stance.
‘It’s not the size, it’s the sugar content. You seriously need to control your blood sugar levels; I’m giving you a prescription for another tablet which should help. The manufacturers don’t have much information about side effects on very elderly people so you must call the surgery if you have any unpleasant side effects.’
‘Huh! So I’m a sort of guinea pig?’
‘That’s right.’
When the threat of total oblivion presents itself there is an urgent need to take radical action. Although with my steely will power I reckoned it wouldn’t be a problem. All I had to do was stop buying and eating Custard Creams. The first week passed and I marched up and down the biscuit aisle in the local super market without being tempted. Then I spied a placard {two packets for the price of one}. Crikey! They’re giving them away, so I bought two packets and got four. The point being you has to take advantage of the Supermarkets generosity whenever you can. Obviously I wasn’t going to eat them but display them on the kitchen shelf to cement my resistance to temptation.
‘So what’s with all these biscuits?’ said Babs, ‘they’re not good for you. You are on the way to making me a widow!’
‘It’s OK they’re freebies-I’m not going to eat them it’s merely to remind me of the danger.
Two days later all the biscuits mysteriously vanished. We do have a ghost in our house but there’s no evidence to support the idea it is partial to Custard Creams. I had to accept in all probability I did eat them. Though I cannot recall doing so, maybe I’ve been sleep walking, anyway these biscuits had become my Achilles heel and I needed a rapid solution for the problem.
The trouble is they seem to be joined together in daisy like fashion, you eat the first one and the rest follow until you are left with the empty wrapper. I needed a really aggressive Trump type strategy to eliminate them from my Diet.
For a start the title, Custard Creams was too yummy and didn’t help matters. I needed to adopt my own marketing strategy and rebrand the packaging. Make the biscuits look yucky and life threatening. After buying a further two packets I stuck on labels with a new name and a health warning.
Mustard Flavoured Faeces.
WARNING these biscuits may kill you.
Finally I placed them high up on a kitchen cupboard well out of reach. I would need to make a 70 yard trek down to the shed to get the steps to reach them, which would be highly unlikely.
After one week I felt my strategy was working I had no inclination to eat the biscuits and seeing the warning labels every day my brain seemed to accept they really would taste awful. I felt I was cured and there was no need to have them displayed in the kitchen anymore. I hated the sight of them and the very idea they could kill me. I could meander up and down the biscuit aisle in the supermarket without any inclination to purchase the demon biscuits. Although I found it hard to believe the brain could manipulate the taste buds so easily the experiment had worked, I was living proof. Maybe I had inadvertently stumbled on a solution to the global Diabetes problem. A little bit like the Andrew Fleming penicillin thing.
Imagine all the anti food stickers one could apply ‘Catastrophic Cake – Ghastly Gateau – Calamitous Curry etc. The list would be endless. The thought occurred to me that maybe I could patent these anti food labels and make a fortune! Maybe I’d get some sort of gong even a knighthood. Wow! It would save the NHS billions.
I knocked the packets down from the shelf with the kitchen broom and discovered they had been opened and all the biscuits had gone. Babs came in from the garden and removing her garden gloves enquired.
‘What’s up? You look as though you’ve seen our ghost.’
‘The biscuits-I stuttered th-they’ve all gone!’.
Babs looked awkward and began to stutter ‘Ah-yes-well – I -err you know I don’t like waste, and I didn’t want to give them to the birds, so I ate them.’
‘What d’yer mean YOU ATE THEM! How could you?’.
‘You should be grateful, I’m sacrificing my waist line (such as it is) to protect your blood sugar levels. Apart from that I think they’re really yummy, I’m getting very partial to custard creams.’