Should you mix cakes, crying and camping together?
I thought after writing a serious article about plagiarism, I would lighten up a bit.
We have a TV programme here people watch quite a lot. I don’t know why.
It is called the great British Bake off.
I believe they have a similar programme in America, although not called British, that would make that entire revolution thing pointless, wouldn’t it?
I have a fear it may also appear in different guises in other English-speaking countries.
If that is the case, then western civilisation is doomed.
There are two reasons why I dislike this show and I have only watched one episode.
The first reason is they do their baking in a tent in the middle of a field.
Why do they do that?
Most cooking programmes put their people in warm kitchens with modern equipment.
If you do bake cakes in a tent, please stop. It could be a fire hazard.
If you bake cakes in your tent while on a camping holiday, please go home.
In the history of humanity there have been, and still are, nomadic people who choose to live in tents, and I wager none of them have tried to produce a Victoria sponge in their tent.
They have more sense.
No sane person will put up a tent in a field and then start baking cakes.
That’s why kitchens were invented.
The second reason is something I have heard over the grapevine.
People are crying; yes, crying when they are criticised or sent packing from this show.
Sent out of the tent in tears, flung out into the field: never to darken the tent flap again to create a cinnamon and current crumpet.
Reports have reached me that a lady wept because her cake, made of sweet potato and something else, was given the thumbs down.
What did she expect, sweet potato in a cake, what was she thinking?
And worse, a man, yes, a man, sobbed because his concoction was considered a calamity.
Now I am speaking directly to English people only, and especially to English men.
I am not going to speak for other people’s culture.
What is going on?
I know English men trickle the odd tear. I have seen it happen.
At funerals.
At the birth of their children.
When they have imbibed too much of the vino collapso “You’re my best mate, I’ve always loved you” (sob), you know the thing.
Yes, there are places and occasions where shedding the odd drop of the salty sob juice is acceptable, but not if your cake has crumbled.
There is no excuse for crying when you have been kicked off a cooking show because you can’t cook.
Or crying when you are ejected from a talent show because have no talent or cannot tango or two step without tripping over your two left feet.
You do not cry when your team has (a) lost or (b) won.
Now there will be many people who will claim that bottling up our inner emotions is a bad thing. They may be right.
But you could just loosen the bottle top and discretely let out a few drops, rather than spray your soggy emotions over everybody.
Especially if you are stuck in a tent, in the middle of a field, with sagging sponges everywhere.
More stories from my sometimes-addled brain.
Is re-writing an article plagiarism?
Am I a spirited Englishman or a repressed one?
The things I discovered in America.
