Bake Off

 We are in the middle of a world pandemic, the computers are going senile, Brexit is looming, Kent is going to be a lorry park, students are locked up in halls like uncommon criminals, the weather has turned cold, a well ventilated room feels like a pre-cursor to pneumonia, climate change threatens floods and gales but at least there’s Bake Off.

When I was teaching, yesterday evening, loads of my pupils told me how they were ‘done with it all now’ or how they ‘just miss hugs’ or their parents think that we should just go back to normal because ‘even if we didn’t have a government it couldn’t have been any worse.’

I went into the evening humming, “I predict a riot,” but as I made my Bake Off ready biscuits I felt calmer. Baking in your own kitchen (not in a tent) is a therapeutic experience. I particularly like biscuits because they are even though people think they’re hard and you can squish the dough and imagine it’s anyone who annoyed you. Also, if you have the right cutters you can make biscuits with faces.

I learnt yesterday that the only place you can get a biscuit with a face now is my kitchen because whoever made Happy Faces stopped a while ago and now they don’t even put them in a Family Circle tin now.

Watching Bake Off is a proper family activity. We sit with our cake and shout at the telly. We are missing Sandi’s hugs but Matt Lucas is great. Pru has a good line in innuendo, almost up to Sue’s standard. It feels like normality. 

The Hollywood Handshake is still allowed to happen, although we do think they should stop joking about never washing that hand again.

This year’s contestants are just as brilliant and entertaining as before. I’m not sure it was right that Lorien left in the first week and Mak definitely shouldn’t have gone this week but Rowan is very entertaining and worth keeping on. Linda will go early because she’s got grey hair and there’s a bias against nanny bakers. I like them all but I’m rooting for Hermine. 

It felt like the whole of Britain came together for one hour last night. We might not agree on much but we love our biscuits.