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Like many British people (and I suspect many other people around the world), it’s a real treat to crunch on a biscuit when enjoying a cup of tea or coffee.  So you can imagine my surprise, when having my early Sunday morning imperfectly made cuppa (see http://purpleslinky.com/offbeat/the-complicated-cuppa-cup-that-cheers-or-mug-of-misery/) that I discovered I was amongst those idiots who have managed to suffer a minor injury at the hands of the humble hobnob.

http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/125767/Crumbs-half-of-us-have-been-injured-by-biscuits

I regret to admit that I’m one of the 29% of adult Brits who have managed to splash themselves with hot tea when dunking my digestive.  For those of you who’ve never dunked or heard of dunking let me enlighten you.  Once you’ve made your tea (or coffee) (beverage) and taken the biscuit of your choice from the biscuit tin (dunkee), you then proceed to dip a bite size piece of the dunkee into the beverage while holding onto the remainder to use as a ‘handle’ .  Once the dunkee has been dunked for a couple of seconds you bring it to the surface of the beverage and then manouevre the dunkee together with beverage as close to your chin as you can before biting (or sucking) the dunkee.  The skill is in getting dunkee to lips before it drops back into the beverage.  More often than not the dunkee drops its load back into the beverage thereby splashing the dunker with hot beverage!

If you’re lucky enough to dodge the hot beverage if the dunkee drops, don’t believe for one minute that the danger ends there.  You then have the job of taking a teaspoon, delving to the bottom of the beverage and trawling the cup to retrieve the errant dunkee to prevent choking.  This is no mean feat as, more often than not, the dunkee slips back into the beverage like an eel through a fishing net, which again can cause the dunker injury from splashback!

Having overcome the hazards of dunking, I have also regularly fallen into the 28% of Brits who have choked on biscuit crumbs and at times I’ve fallen into the 7% of Brits who have dropped a biscuit tin on their foot and the 7% who’ve been nibbled by a pet while feeding it with a biscuit (obviously I’m so sweet they can’t tell the difference between a biscuit and me), but thankfully none of my injuries have required the services of the A&E Department of the local hospital.

So there you have it – the Great British Biscuit Bite Back!!  I’m now going to get my mid morning coffee and I’m just pondering on whether to risk having a Bourbon (the UK version of the Oreo) biscuit – could be a nice treat or could end up as ‘death by chocolate’!!!  If it turns out to be the latter then at least I will have died happy!