The One With The Great British Bake Off

My mate Clementine once suggested that I should apply for The Great British Bake Off. 

This was way back when it was still on BBC2 and 3 old ladies and a goat watched it. 

Not like it is now. Prime-time BBC1 with millions of people watching and those same millions all taking to social media to comment as they watch.

We've just this minute found out who has won this series and congratulations to Nancy. You're a better woman than I am.

Now don't get me wrong I can bake. It's not for nothing that the Lemon Cake family have nicknamed me 'Cakie', because I invariably have a freshly baked cake about my person. 
I'm not a bad baker. I'm not fancy though. I make a respectable plain cake. Ginger, lemon drizzle, carrot, chocolate, Victoria sponge - you know the score. I don't ice. I don't adorn. 
I don't decorate.

I don't make my own fondant! (feels the icy death stare from Mary Berry). 

So there's that against me, because as moist (snigger) as my cakes are I can't make the Taj Mahal out of them. Neither can I construct the Hanging Gardens of Babylon from shortbread. 

I make a lovely sausage roll but, as I haven't made pastry since I was at school, I buy it I'm afraid and the only bread I make involves a trick with a bottle of beer (oh grow up - not like that for goodness sake, people have got to eat it).

So all in all I'm on a non, sour dough, starter to be star baker.

But the main reason I can't apply for The Great British Bake Off is this.

It's nothing to do with Mary Berry looking disapprovingly at me when I say I've never made my own filo pastry (seriously who the hell does? even professional chefs don't do that).

It's nothing to do with hubby fancying Sue Perkins (do you want to tell him he's barking up the wrong tree with that one, or shall I?)

It's not even to do with wilting into a middle aged hormonal mess if I come within 5 feet of Mr Paul Hollywood.

It's this.

I'd swear.

I mean I'd really, really swear.

Proper swearing. Not just 'bloody hell' or 'oh bugger this'. It's so tense in that tent that, to quote Mrs Doyle in 'Father Ted',  I'd say feck and worse than feck!  

How in the name of iced fingers do they not eff and jeff like a docker? I would be effing and blinding with the best of them when it all went tits up or I burnt myself on a Swiss roll tin or someone left my ice cream out of the freezer! 

If my dough hadn't risen, or my cake had collapsed, there is no way on this earth I wouldn't utter my Mum's favourite saying "Well that's pissed on the matches!" 

Or when the steely eyed Hollywood was on the prowl, trying to un-nerve me, I couldn't help but muse "He's everywhere him, like shit in a field." 

They literally wouldn't be able to broadcast a single word I said. 

It's not that I'm a foul mouthed person in general it's just that when they're no kids about.. well I do like a a good swear up. Me and Lemon Cake Lady love a bloody good swear when we're away from the boys. We 'apply ourselves' to quote hubby. A good old fashioned, Anglo Saxon swear is relaxing. Just like baking. 

Only it's not relaxing baking in a tent with millions of people watching you and not being able to shout 'bollocks' when you've got your flavours all wrong and your meringue tastes of soap!

Lavender... my arse.....