Rituals are important, they provide us with a means of unification; with a sense of purpose. They provide a sense of routine and thus, comfort and familiarity. I for instance knew a man - an accountant who was married with three kids - who lived a seemingly perfectly normal life and yet, once a year, on a weekend sometime in Spring, he would wake-up early, the house still shrouded in darkness, slide out of bed while his wife and children remained fast asleep, and gently pack a few of his vital belongings into an Umbro duffel-bag. As the first rays of sunshine began to trickle through the drawn blinds, and his duffel-bag was near brimming with underwear, he would kiss his wife on the forehead - taking a moment to listen to her gentle, rhythmic breathing - before padding out of the room. He would then trod through dew-dappled heather into the nearby foothills, where he would then cover himself in lambs' wool and allow himself to be taken under the care of a ewe for about a week. He said that this helped keep him 'balanced' for the remainder of the year.
A far more wholesome, and universally relatable, ritual however is watching an ever-dwindling number of amateur bakers congregate in a rurally-situated gazebo to competitively bake. Bake Off has consumed us, it has wormed its sugary hands into the very darkest recesses of our being and latched on. It is within us and we are powerless to resist its emotional tumult.
Last night, and it brings me no pride to say this, I became teary-eyed at the sight of someone else crying over a problem with their baking - a problem which turned out to not be all too significant in the grand scheme of things. This is the extent to which Bake Off cements itself in the heart of its viewers. The transition from watching as a curious cynic who's only tuning in to scoff at the level of reverence such a seemingly simplistic and irrelevant show can be held in, to falling to your knees, screaming toward the heavens, your cheeks damp with tears after Paul Hollywood has been vaguely disparaging about an éclair that somebody really had a good-go at making, happens with unnerving rapidity.
Last night's supreme moment of drama involved KimJoy - a person who is avowedly disinterested in animals, yet will unfailingly craft every single baked good that passes through her hands into the form of a cutesy turtle or some such, leading us to necessarily conclude that she actually harbours a legitimate hatred for animals and relishes the thought of their consumption, even if only in effigial, baked form. After having welled up during judgement of her showstopper weeks previously it was evident that the mounting pressure was getting to her. At one point, during the creation of her technical, a bizarrely ostentatious cake involving seven layers - which I think we can all agree is too many layers, KimJoy was unable to create a chocolate mousse and she broke down.
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Say what you will, there's no denying it's a piss poor mousse.Yet such is the emotional investment engendered by the show that of course this seemed like the appropriate reaction. No other response to the failure to create a chocolate mousse seemed apt. It would surely only be someone with a heart of stone, some great unfeeling behemoth, inured to their own suppressed, inchoate emotions that would be able to stare down at the shamefully thin pool of brown gloop that passed for KimJoy's chocolate mousse and respond with anything other than the hottest and saltiest of tears. To be a witness to such trauma is, for all but the most empathically deadened, an equally harrowing experience. Thank god the end is in sight, for I, for we as a society, are not designed to withstand such distress.
If you're in the need of something of a palate cleanser, to expunge from your mind the caprice of fate and the limitless depths of human suffering, I recommend watching Ken Burns' The Vietnam War. We brace ourselves for the final.
