Coconut biscuits

Forever

It is a cool, breezy evening but because I am full of fish, salad and potatoes — I am warm, my cheeks blushing rosey red. My dad pulls out his chair to sit down opposite me under the dim restaurant light with a plate of desserts: a runny-looking rice pudding which comes in its own jar, some red grapes and sat next to them, are two golden biscuits that look like they could break his teeth with one bite.

Mol, you’ll like these! He says, pointing to the biscuits with his spoon. Coconut delight, they’re called.

He has my full attention. Ooh! I say. He picks one up and holds it out in front of me. Have a bite before you go and get one.

And so I do. My earlier judgement was swiftly proven wrong, they are not hard but light and airy and chewy all at the same time — it takes me a while to finish my bite as I am swept away by a burst of sweetness in my mouth — coconut, honey maybe, some extra sugar on top — I feel euphoric, every part of me is satisfied — I begin pulling all sorts of faces to try and express how much I am enjoying it with accompanying ‘mmmmms’. I already know that this will become my new hyper-fixation and from now on I’ll be googling any coconut-based sweet treat recipe I can find. In fact, less than two minutes later I am babbling on about how I’d like to have some form of coconut cake for my birthday, which is four months away.

Though it isn’t just taste of these biscuits that has pierced my soul and belly. When I was 13, my family and I went to Portugal — we stayed in a friend’s apartment that had lime green chairs and a glass dining table. Other than that, the only thing I remember about that holiday is that the weather was temperamental, the sea wild, and that I ate a lot of coconut biscuits.

They were always buried in the bottom of my dad’s black backpack for any necessary or unnecessary occasion: a walk, for the beach, for an afternoon lie down with a cup of Yorkshire tea that my mum had bundled into a sandwich bag. He would rip open the packaging with precision (because we simply cannot let the biscuits go stale — like they had a chance), pass them round to each of us and we would enjoy them together quietly. It has always been the case with biscuits or cereal bars or any kind of beige snack — on a Sunday when I was a child, mum and dad would drag my sister and I for a long walk in the Peaks. Protesting furiously, I’d have rather been sitting on MSN chatting rubbish, too young to appreciate the beauty of it all. But when I needed it most, at the summit of a hill or at a viewpoint above a reservoir, water glistening beneath us, or after sauntering through mud — buried in the bottom of dad’s backpack was some form of biscuit to accompany a mighty flask of tea. It was always the highlight: sitting down, taking in the views, filling up my empty stomach. Warmth in the cold air. Laughter on the hills.

I look up at my dad, a constant in the sea of people bustling around me to get their food. He is 60 next year, I will be 29. His birthday is the day after mine, the 7th of July, which means I have managed to overshadow his every year since I was born. He says he doesn’t mind, we try to make him feel just as special.

So much has changed since we ate coconut biscuits together fifteen years ago in Portugal, but in some, weird way, it feels like time has stood still — I mean, I pay taxes now and have grown a few inches, but in some ways I still feel like a 13-year-old girl, and I know for a fact that my dad doesn’t feel 58. Either way, I am still sat with my family eating coconut biscuits, reflecting on memories, treasuring flavours, taking us back to times and places we so rarely think of.