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The great biscuit scandal of 1965


The Great ‘Mrs Baker’ Biscuit Scandal



The teachers at my north London junior school, Sir Thomas Abney, used to sell McVities biscuits to the children for their break time. An early example, perhaps, of product placement. 
I used to buy a biscuit when I could afford it; when I had saved enough from my bus fares to buy them. We, I had older brothers at the school,  often used to walk home from school to save the bus fares and with that money we used to buy sweets and biscuits. Biscuits and sweets were something that wasn't a priority at home. Sweets had to be earned at home. Really earned, they were kept on the top shelf of the cupboard.
Every morning before mid morning break, Mrs Baker our class teacher went to the store cupboard at the back of the class and got out the biscuit box. She returned to her desk and put them down and told the class to queue up if they wanted to buy biscuits that day. It was only then she opened the box of biscuits and we duly stood up and queued to buy them. 
As I queued, when I did so,  I hoped upon hope upon hope that the wafer biscuits wouldn't sell out. I remember that they were wrapped in a blue or red plastic wrapper. The biscuit inside was the same: a crispy layered wafer of sweet biscuit. I can't remember any discernible flavour. Just a crumbly wafer that exploded when you bit into it.
I used to try and get to the as near to front of the biscuit queue as I could. The kids at the front desks always managed to be at the front of the queue; They were the swots, the kids Mrs Baker addressed every question to.
One day in the playground I met a friend from another class and he had two of the wafer biscuits I liked, loved in fact; would die for in fact.I was envious that he had two of them.

Because we were in a poor area most kids were in the same boat with money and were in similar states of poverty I asked him in all innocence how he afforded two of the wafer biscuits.

“They’re only a penny ha'penny.” He answered.

I looked at him with incredulity.

“But Mrs Baker charges us thre'pence for them!”

He looked shocked at that and turned and asked his friend what the wafers cost in Mr Maxwell’s class.

“Penny ha’penny.” was the reply “Penny ha’penny.” he stressed again.

“Baker charges us threepence!” I blurted out.
"Yeah for two..."
"Nah." I replied "Just one....just one"
"You ate the other one..." he said.
"Haven't...she charges us thre'pence..."
You just didn't argue with Mrs Baker. Never. I never saw one kid argue back to Mrs  Baker. Not until the 'Black Princess' incident with my friend Emmanuel. That is, however, another story that will appear later in my story.

After that revealing playground exchange I never bought another of Baker's wafers again. I vowed I would get sweets after school in the local shops where you didn't get cheated. 



To this day I have never solved the mystery of the biscuit overcharging. Perhaps it paid for a villa in Southend On Sea. Perhaps.
Kind souls have suggested that Mrs Baker simply got the prices wrong. Or that Mr Maxwell who charged less for the biscuits was subsiding the biscuit sales. He was kind enough to do such a thing. 


I still have no charity for that woman. I never will have.

Mrs Baker: That bloody woman had a husband: The poor sod.




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