Wood Shame

I’ve worked excessively hard all day today and can’t wait to sit down in front of the Great British Bake Off on iPlayer. I had a very interesting chat with my friend Shannon about this particular show at Jem’s party yesterday. She isn’t enjoying this series as much, because she claims it’s already “left her behind.” She reckons in the first few weeks of the last series everything that they gave the contestants to do was achievable by any amateur baker across the country. We enjoyed watching the early stages because we could imagine being able to do what they were doing ourselves. This year they went in with weird egg-shaped meringues, floating in god-knows what and covered in towers of spun sugar and she simply threw her hands in the air and went “as if!” I kind of see her point, although nothing would stop me from enjoying that brilliant show, and I wouldn’t know how to bake even a basic sponge, so I watch the contestants in awe whatever they’re making.

I drove Nathan to Wood Green this afternoon to deliver something to the council office there, and had a bit of a nostalgia fest walking through the Morrison’s, which was our cut-through from the tube to Mountview Drama School. I was there for a year in the mid-90s, which seems like a phenomenally long time ago. I wonder if people look at me yet and think I look like an old man.

Anyway, Wood Green is absolutely horrific these days; really rough around the edges and filled with sad-faced, angry-looking people who shuffle around the shops miserably.

I’m rather relieved to discover that Michael Le Vell has been found innocent of child sex offenses  because I think it will make people think twice before jumping on this “a celebrity abused me when I was 12” band wagon. I think it’s got to a stage now when anyone who can prove they were alone with a famous person at some point in their youth is eligible to have a go at getting a bit of compensation. It makes it very complicated for children who genuinely have been abused by adults, but we must not enter a world where the stories that young people tell are believed as a matter of course, or because somebody thinks it’s inappropriate for them to be cross-questioned. I also feel that the identities of those who are accused of these sorts of crimes should be protected until a verdict is reached. Michael Le Vell’s private life was smeared all over the media and ripped apart in court, and this is simply not fair.