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Jayne Dawson: Cookie invasion is taking the biscuit
SOMETIMES, just sometimes, I feel like it's gone a bit too far. I mean, I'm grateful to them and everything. In our hour of need, they were there, giving our women nylon stocking so they could have a night off from the make-do-and-mend version involving gravy browning and a steady hand with an eyebrow pencil.
That was a big help, no question about it. The boost to morale from having an actual pair of stockings on your legs and not a bit of leftover Sunday dinner cannot be overestimated.
And they fought alongside our boys to the end – although a churlish person might point out that, although they were there at the end, they weren't actually there at the beginning.
Nope, they took their time about joining in the Second World War did the Americans, leaving us to pretty much stand alone for two long, hard, lonely years before they joined the side of righteousness.
But they did the right thing eventually. We, in turn, have been in thrall to them ever since, a situation to which they have responded by churning out many films giving the impression we featured as the merest bit part players, chiefly responsible for providing some scenic locations, in the glory that was America's defeat of The Bad Guys.
That's just the way it is, but I'm not here to knock them. Given the choice between living in America or, say, Afghanistan, I think most of us know which regime we would choose.
But sometimes, our Americanisation can get a bit irksome, can't it?
The film industry is a case in point. Some of the films are okay. I mean, what's not to love about Toy Story? It's funny, it's cute, it's a little bit sad and it has jokes for the grown-ups too.
In general, if you want a film that is clever and slick with a big, fat budget and little, skinny actors, a film full of glossy hair, gleaming teeth and fast dialogue then look to the many American films showing everywhere.
But isn't it a relief, just sometimes, to see a British film made with no money and featuring people with fillings and fat bits? People who are ordinary, everyday and not buffed and maintained to perfection.
And as with films, so with food. We're choking, positively choking, on American-influenced food. It's in every high street, every shopping mall: all those burgers and buckets of fried chicken, all those cookies and cup cakes. Everything is glossy and pumped up to impossible perfection, everything is synthetic and showy – very much like the film stars really.
So isn't it also a relief, just sometimes, to sit down with a cup of tea and a couple of Rich Tea biscuits, and maybe a custard cream?
Well I think so, anyway. But apparently you lot DON'T because, it turns out, sales of traditional biscuits are plummeting while sales of those big, nasty cookie things are rising.
Yes, you heard me right. The digestive, the jammy dodger, the ginger snap, in other words your every day basic biscuits, are all in peril.
We're giving up on the little, dry, plain biscuits of our childhood and embracing those giant discs from across the Atlantic.
One minute your choice was a Garibaldi or a chocolate finger. The next every shopping mall – and there's an American import of a word right there – wasn't complete without a stall wafting out the sweet, vanilla, manufactured scent of "homebaked" cookies.
Along with the cookie invasion came cupcakes, suddenly as trendy as the latest designer label. No fashionable gathering is complete without these massive mounds of wet sponge decorated with mountains of soft, sickly fondant.
Just the sight of them is meant to take us back to our childhoods, you know, when our moms would stay indoors behind a white picket fence baking these very cupcakes all day long...except, hang on, we never went big on picket fences and our mums made fairy cakes not cupcakes, if they weren't serving Angel Delight straight from the supermarket shelf or opening a tin of peaches.
What's happening here is that we're in danger of allowing marketing people to rewrite our heritage. So just as a reminder, we are the nation that actually grew up munching on custard creams and jammy dodgers with a glass of milk before bed – the people who were brought up on cookies live in another country entirely.
Next, we will be shunning the open window in favour of air conditioning and rejecting the Thermos flask in favour of takeaway cups of coffee – and our journey to being the 51st state of the USA will be complete.
So much as I appreciate a good Hollywood film, or a vintage episode of Frasier, sometimes a line in the supermarket aisle needs to be drawn, and some aspects of America need to be kept across the Atlantic.
My conscience is clear. I've never willingly succumbed to a cookie, I'm a custard cream woman, right through. But some of you out there, you need to examine your consciences, and your cupboards.
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Sunday 12 February 2012
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