Part One

I live in a pretty quiet and pleasant part of town; that's one of the reasons I'm here. Estate agents once referred to it as 'a much sought-after area', though whether they continue to do so I don't know, I haven't checked. What was once a neighbourhood bordering fields and countryside is now surrounded by enormous personality-free housing estates, composed of anonymous identikit dwelling places. Fortunately, local woodlands and the riverside have been spared the ravages of 'development' (where's my dictionary?...), and there remains an oasis-like element to where I live.      

Along with the estates, my area is remarkably devoid of 'facilities'. By this I mean shops, cafes, restaurants, post offices, banks, anything else. When I first moved here, there was a local shop of sorts, but it has been closed and replaced by a pharmacy. Drugs are better business than food in these parts, it seems. This local pharmacy, bizarrely, still insists on people wearing masks, and the surreal sight can be had of folk anachronistically masking up before entering. Personally, I regard it as an enclave of fascism, a no-go zone, and don't go near the place.

Perceptively, my wife said that the pharmacy can run the mask racket only because the locals permit it. She is right. And herein lies the shadow aspect of the 'quiet, pleasant, low-crime' nature of the area: unthinking, hideous bowing down in front of 'authority'. A couple of no-convid buddies I met during 2020 laughed when I told them where I live. We named it the Compliance Capital of the Universe. 'Nicola says you have to eat haggis at 3 in the morning in the garden' and they'll it.    

Next to the local drug-and-mind-control centre is a hairdresser. Across the road from there is a Best Western hotel which closes for several months a year. A fifteen minute-walk away is an uninspiring little local shop, which houses post office facilities for three mornings a week. And that's it.

At least, that was it, until recently. In a little corner of land sandwiched between some local woodland and the ring road a new building emerged which wasn't a housing newbuild. Typically, it took a long while for construction to be completed, and for any clue to appear as to the new residents. Eventually, they opened up. Another large doctor-and-pharmacy establishment, this time for animals - a monster-sized vets. And next to it, a far smaller space was converted into a local curiosity: Shakes 'n Cakes.

I walked past Shakes 'n Cakes once or twice in its early days, casting furtive glances inside. If it reminded me of anything, it looked like a modern descendant of the milk bars of the late 1950s/early 1960s. I never got to go inside a milk bar, but there was one in the town square of Aylesbury when the family first moved there in 1959. It was the hip place to go, from what I could glean. Those little motor scooters that mods rode would be parked outside. The sound of the juke box playing Billy Fury and John Leyton could be heard as you walked past the door. Inside, the trendier of the town's teens could be seen drinking, well, milk, I suppose. Straight or as a shake, I couldn't really tell, But milk it was.

Things were different in those days; clearly the needs of the human body have changed since then. During my childhood, milk was good for you. It was rich in much-needed vitamins and minerals, and you couldn't get enough of it. 'Drink a pint a milk a day' was the health slogan of the time. At morning play time in school, everyone would rush to the hall or canteen to grab their one-third pint bottle of milk and guzzle it down before running off to play football. This was milk provided by the state to ensure a basic intake of nutrients for all kids, at a time when the state could excusably be considered as catering for the welfare of its citizens (unlike today, when the opposite is true).

And then some spoilsport invented cholesterol, and milk became bad, the product of farting, global warming demonic entities aka cows. Now to be replaced in the diet of every responsible citizen by synthetic vegan cheez (excuse me while I feel sick...) and health-giving insect burgers. It's called progress, by the way.... 

Part Two

Anyhoo, back to Shakes 'n Cakes. Saturday January 7th, 2023. We took an hour's walk through the woods before hitting the joint. Late lunch it was to be: about 3pm, the time we often end up having lunch, while most of the local population is beginning to wonder about its evening meal. A quiet pancake or something, a near-empty cafe...... Wrong!

The place was heaving. And, as we sat down to wait for our order of pancake and crepe, it heaved some more. A queue was forming, reaching from the till all the way to the exit. It was mainly a family affair - mum, dad, and quite a few kids - but all ages had a look-in, with older teenagers and grandparents all in evidence.

It was great. All these people just out for the afternoon, laughing, talking, jammed close together on the seats. I don't know what some people ordered, but it arrived like enormous castles of doughy stuff topped with cream, ice cream, strawberries, and more cream. My wife consulted the menu but was unable to locate the relevant dishes. And across the aisle an eight-year old girl was spooning into her mouth from a tub a fluorescent turquoise substance which dripped stickily from a wooden spoon.

I felt strangely happy. Eventually it dawned on me. People out for a nice time. Simple, real, uncomplicated. Not worried about fats or carbs or carbon bloody footprints. Couldn't care less about correctness; not a woker in sight. 

It's reflected in the menu. 'Aberdeen's largest dessert parlour chain' it proudly boasts. Not that we are in Aberdeen, that's 100 miles away, but who cares? 

And the menu itself is extraordinary. It simply communicates the names of the items for sale and the main ingredients. That's all. 'Hot desserts: Banana and Strawberry - strawberries, bananas, nutella and chocolate sauce'. You get the picture. There's no colours, symbols, and other esoterica, denoting vegan, gluten-free, warning you of allergens left right and centre, whether this pancake is suitable for Sagittarians, and the rest. It's just a menu, and relies on the innate intelligence of the human being to work out that a milk shake contains milk, and that nutella (which features in a large number of dishes) most likely contains nuts (the clue's in the name, folks).

I was shocked at the sense of relief, release, and freedom which overcame me that Saturday afternoon in Shakes 'n Cakes. It was completely unexpected. And when the time came for us to go, we fought our way through the pancake-munching throng and into the late afternoon. Darkness had already fallen, and an unpredicted downpour had started up. I hardly noticed. We walked and skipped through the torrent, and arrived home soaked to the skin. It was as if the rain failed to touch me; I felt elated.

Part Three

There is a serious aspect to the Milk Shake Epiphany. It communicates a warning. 

Whatever we fill our minds with - whatever I preoccupy my mind with, let's get honest and personal - goes to create and perpetuate the world that we (or I) live in. Many of the people I know have something of this woke/politically correct/trying hard to be virtuous thing about them. All too willing to sound off about stopping people doing things because of climate change; wearing masks, injecting products, more wearing masks, all out of fear for their own safety and fear of not doing good for society. All of this without seriously investigating the truth or otherwise of anything, taking it on trust. The result is pernickety, scaredy-this, scaredy-that. They are anxious, sincere, uptight, want to save the planet, and are lost in an ocean of programming that they mistake for care, concern, and being right.

To me this is all bullshit, and does great harm. It winds me up; or, rather, I allow it to wind me up. I devote time and energy to getting wound up and frustrated by it, to no avail. Energetically, my preoccupation feeds it. I am living the same 'level' of consciousness as the beast that I am opposing. It's no good, it has to stop. It's time for me to pay less attention to the histrionics of the do-gooders. It's a trap...... 

Linked below is the transcript of an interview between John Cooper and Emanuel Pastreich. It's rather long, and ranges over a variety of topics. Parts of it are relevant to this current theme, however, some way in, about paragraph 12, 13, 14. It begins "These big companies work through academia....."

Two relevant extracts: "It is a paradox that the people who have abdicated their critical thinking skills ARE the intellectuals themselves. Whereas the common working class people, your typical man on the street, seems to be able to acknowledge the evil when he sees it, and to identify government overreach."

While the conversation focusses on 'academics' and 'intellectuals', this is equally true for a larger section of the population, those who consider themselves well-informed and well-educated, who are likely to be university graduates, and who consider themselves a cut above rest.

And again: "Harvard today is an investment fund with a little university attached on the side...... Harvard has become just a brand, like Adidas or Google..... The Harvard brand is used promiscuously to mask or to rebrand disturbing activities."

This quote hits the mark, since it applies to most, if not all, the 'major universities' of the world. It describes precisely what I have observed to have taken place in Oxford, where I graduated. Any pretence of encouraging independent and original thinking has long since gone. Instead, the emphasis is almost exclusively on promoting certain agendas, particularly global warming programmes (is it a coincidence that Oxford city has been singled out for the 15-minute city experiment?) and the superiority of the modern scientific materialistic approach to life in general. Not good, not good....

https://www.europereloaded.com/how-world-governments-are-run-by-multinational-companies/

(Bizarrely, the link above seems to connect with a totally different article, from 2019! Maybe an indirect form of censorship underway, I don't know. The relevant piece is Jan 10th 2023, 'How World Governments... etc. It can be found in the 'financial' section. Worth looking for.) 

And, as a footnote: veganism. It's slightly complicated. I have great sympathy with veganism. I would live approaching a vegan diet myself, but my intestines won't tolerate it. Veganism is the non-hypocritical response of a consciousness with empathy. However, it's been hijacked by the forces of darkness, into being part of cancel culture, intolerant, and also a step in the direction of a synthetic life filled with synthetic foods. Unnatural, unhealthy. Maybe the solution is to eat vegan without taking on the label of 'vegan', without identifying yourself as one. Who needs labels anyway?

1961 juke box classic: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=br640jq-Azs

Images: Shakes 'n Cakes waffle

              London milk bar, 1950s

              Pink Floyd album 'Atom Heart Mother'. Global warming zealots with a sense of humour (not too common....) could rename it 'Atom Fart Mother'.

               Heart of Darkness: Oxford University