If I put Prince William’s name in this title, will it count as part of the world-wide buzz?

If Prince William asks for a groom’s cake to be made from the McVitie’s company, perhaps the little Digestive biscuits I’ve been eating for 20+ years aren't something to sneer at.

At first, they were impossibly difficult to procure in the US – I bought some at British import stores, later found them online, and now, sheepishly, I can buy them at the largest supermarket in my area. Sure, Prince William’s cake had 1700 rich tea biscuits, and I’ve only ever eaten the Original Digestives. I would hope Royals would have a better/higher quality treat with their tea than I’ve had all these years, but still, it puts my luscious little bite right up there for the world to see.

As a person who received very little validation as a kid, and ended up with a strong self-doubt mechanism (if I think it, it must be wrong; if I want it, no one else will; if I don’t want it, others will think it’s great; I’m destined to dislike most popular media and books; I used to eat pizza from the top down, layer by layer, ending at the thickest, breadiest crust I could find; I like musicals, for heaven’s sake). So my liking of Digestives, and, subsequently offering them as a treat to others at weekend escapes and finding that no one enjoyed them quite as much as me, gave me just a few doubts.

I know of only one other person as fiercely loyal to the lowly biscuit as me, and that’s the best friend I made in 1982 on our junior-year semester abroad, where we attended a Midwestern university via transcript only, and spent the semester in London. We had classes at the University of London, but they were taught by Midwestern faculty hell-bent on getting out of the Midwest for a semester – we made up stories of love affairs and marital escapes to overcome what otherwise looked like the pathos of middle-aged professors who were bored with their lives. We didn’t have classes with British kids, just other Midwestern undergrads who wanted to get out of Dodge. We were ensconced in a 6-story row house, simultaneously part of and totally separate from the London around us. We had classes a mere three days a week, so as not to interfere with the shows, field trips, and travel that was planned for students every Friday through Monday. We saw so many shows, so many cathedrals, so many historic and amazing places that we developed the only possible response – glazed boredom and what I guess I’d call tourist fatigue. “Not another Titian,” we’d moan. “Do we have to go see Cats?” Stonehenge felt like the drudgery of an elementary school field trip foisted on unwitting kids for their own good. Such ingratitude, such lassitude in the face of overwhelming and matchless opportunity. I’d give anything to go back now, in my 40’s, and cherish every last painting, every church’s spire, every architectural tidbit, every inch of sculpture. I’d read up on things before I saw them. I’d try to sketch them even though I'm no good at drawing. I'd write poetry about them. I’d do anything to breathe the life of these masterpieces into my soul, hold them captive there until I could understand these things that were so much larger than me, so much older, so much evidence that my tiny little existence is, in fact, a tiny little existence.

Of course some of the art and culture penetrated my young self, but I seem to remember mostly my focus on social interests, my new-found best friend and classmates and the freedoms we experimented with at being 20 and living not only away from home, as we all had since coming to college, but across the ocean, as far away as you could be from the familiar and the family, except that, of course, there was so much overlap between Britain and America that the leave-taking was safe, the equivalent of ordering Thai green curry and requiring the kitchen keep it mild. At the time, though, it seemed to be as much spice as I could handle. Our bedroom was perched on the 6th floor of our 6-story rowhouse, and next to our room was the most gorgeous blond man you could ever hope to be perched at the tippy top of an old house with, but this guy was, disappointingly, verifiably gay – he asked my friend and I to shave his back before he went on a date. This had not yet occurred on our home campuses, so it felt exotic. It never occurred even after we came back, so it may have something much more to do with this particular gentleman than with anything else, but at the time it felt like it was because of where we were.

For me, Digestives are the taste memory of this trip, of my lasting friendship that seemed to fall from the stars and couldn’t possibly be made from worldly parts, as the distinctness in the lives of my friend and I are so clearly delineated, with so little overt overlap. She shouldn’t like me, and she shouldn’t make sense to me. Yet we do, to each other. We wear (or at least, wore) the same dress size, which is impossible, since she’s 5’8” tall and slim-waisted and I’m shy of 5’4” and, for a long time, was curvy without being slim. For my first wedding, I tried on a lovely black cocktail dress that fit me perfectly, making me look sophisticated and beautiful and just a touch sexy. I bought it for my friend to wear, and she looked outstanding in it, a taller, thinner, blonder version of beauty, more striking with her hair and features and the whiteness of her smooth shoulders shown off by the black dress. We shared our stories, our humor, our experiences with being too-darned-smart for our families and most of our friends and retreating to this intelligence to dull the pain of gawky adolescence in which we both suffered having none of the beauty and grace that would emerge decades after our classmates bloomed. And we shared Digestives. We ate them slowly, savoring them. We’d eat them when we got together (eventually we moved away from the Midwest, even living for a brief overlapping time in California, and now again we’re separated by most of the continent), and still do. I bring them with me when I’m going to a bed and breakfast or somewhere where I want a little taste of something decadent. The biscuits and the friendship have come to taste as one to me – cherished, delectable moments where all is right with the world and I’m not alone in my thoughts, yearnings or values.

I hope Prince William enjoyed his Groom’s cake. And that all the guests did, too. Perhaps there’s something to pairing an exquisite moment of connection with the guaranteed savory simplicity of a tea biscuit. There is for me.


For K,
Thanks for 2 full decades of our
McVitie's-style friendship.
Here's to the decades to come.
Love, B