Derek or Graham or insert name here, wasn't sure where his order was and when he finally got it, it wasn't what he asked for. Normally, I wouldn't pay that much attention but just at that moment, I'd started reading the first few pages of The Unbearable Lightness of Being, which I'd just bought from a nearby charity shop. As Derek or Graham, began to work at his sweet looking Danish Pastry "It's not a Bakewell,I asked for a Bakewell, they're over there at the front of the glass", It was at that exact moment my eyes were taking in the words on Nietzsche's idea of eternal return.Everything has happened and will happen again and again just as we have experienced it before, for ever and ever.
I was struck by something as I sat and read. Over the past few years, I've been drawn to reading books that seem to have in them the same sort of theory or something in the story has the same purpose or motif. Everything repeats, if not forever, then at least until some different path is taken at some point in the replay process, taking whoever, wherever they should be rightfully be. This can be on to some next level or different ending to this round of illusion they're currently existing in. Ideas of life based on circles, replaying of past events, having to go through past lives until the right outcome is achieved. Perhaps this explains my reluctance to do things at the Weekend, I've done it before and somewhere, deep inside my reoccurring memories, I know it wasn't really that good a day out thank you so I'd just as well not bother driving to Wales if it's all the same, we just fall out when we get there, believe me, I have to stop in and play Skyrim, it's what's supposed to happen.
The non circular point of all this is that Derek or Graham,should the above in fact be the case, has gone through the entire" Danish not a Bakewell" episode a million times, he'll go through it another million without realising it and his wife will have to look slightly embarrassed all over again while he goes through his making a fuss without wanting to make a fuss thing he was doing so well.
I did feel the impulse to say "Look,it's a cake. It's possible you've done this over a million times and you'll do it all over again so just eat the bloody thing, enjoy it". I didn't of course and in this round of here now, I never will . Saying things like that to people in small cafes/ delis in Cheshire can bring about unrest, at least I think it can, I don't really know, I've never done it..have I ?
When next I sit near Derek or Graham , in the same cafe, reading the same words that make me sit up and think the same things for the first time, again, maybe I should act on the sudden impulse to say something, will I , am I supposed to?
Will the built up resonance of endless replaying of this event over timeless occasions finally burst through the wall of my concious mind and allow me to see what's really going on? Will my sudden interjection of "Derek...we've been here before, you don't get the Bakewell"! into the eternal replaying of this sweet pastry based incident lead to any change in his looped life or indeed my own?.Will it let us both move that little bit further forward towards our true and yet unknown destinies? Will it make Derek come to some startling life altering decision or will it, as I suspect, lead to at least a stern rebuke, a look of incomprehsion or possibly into a fight with a disgruntled man from the Northwest who's reached the end of his cake tether?
The question is,is it worth the Bakewell?
I have no way of knowing , at least , I don't think I do....
On the plus side, my scone was lovely, although, I would have preferred real cream as opposed to the squirty sort we got.
I'll mention it next time around....
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