First day working for the new boss

Here's the view from my new office window this morning:




I like my new office. It's very homely.

It's been snowing for over a week now. My last week at work was defined by the worst November weather since the year I was born. And my last trip to Keyworth was cancelled because of the snow. While it's a pity I didn't get to say goodbye to the folk I'd worked with for the last ten years, I didn't lose sleep over it. I'm already in touch with the folk I want to stay in contact with; I have a list of folk I'll contact when Union is closer to opening, and the rest can face into the mists of memory. I think the mists of memory might be something like London Peculiars - sudden, impenetrable and dense. I appear to have assimilated the fact that I'm not going back remarkably quickly, and although it's less than a week since I walked out the door (humming 'The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, for which I blame Kev Becken), already it feels like another lifetime.

I took a few days holiday last week. It was great. Off into town to buy myself some warm clothes for homeworking in - feels weird explaining this, but for the last ten years I've gone to work looking smart, in skirt-based work-clothes. If I do the cliched working-at-home-in-pyjamas, I'll lose all sense of discipline, and the boundary between working and leisure time will vanish. I need to keep the distinction clear, so I now have a working wardrobe for my new job. I also mixed business with pleasure - I went to the Foodies event on Friday, and on Friday night I went to the Vegware Christmas party. On my own. Knowing no-one there - just the sort of thing I hate doing. It was great. Drank too much and talked all evening, but I have my packaging supplier sorted, and found out about the Edinburgh Chamber of Commerce.

So, today is my first day at work. I'm writing a project plan, then doing proper research into business start-up. This feels amazing. I'm not even going to say it's terrifying anymore - I'm starting something which I've always wanted to do, and it feels wonderful. Although I am now at the end of the plankwalk, and while my fabulous husband tells me the fins below me are porpoises and the flapping birds overhead are not vultures but bluebirds, I'm still not entirely convinced.

Nelson Mandela

well, that was an eventful week.

A two-day visit to the East Midlands wrapped up with a meeting with my favourite shaven-headed bully-boy, who asked if I was still 'minded to leave'. I said yes. He responded with an exit package offer, available now. I grabbed it. That was Thursday afternoon. On Friday morning I typed an email accepting the offer on my blackberry. As 'A Fistful of Dollars' came on the pod, I hit 'send'. Bingo. As of Monday 22 November, I have seven more days of paid work. Then I leave with a cheque and a strange feeling of delirium.

This does feel strange. Earlier today, I was ecstatic and terrified in equal measure. Right now, I'm more balanced and feeling a lot calmer, but flatter, about the whole thing. On one hand, I have got what I want - my intolerable and intolerant workplace has paid me to leave. On the other, I'm not ready - I'm leaving six months before I wanted to be, and before I'm prepared in any way for the next step. On the gripping hand, this is as good a time as any. I've always needed a crisis to kick me into action, and this is one hell of a kick.

Today, I went into town, paid a repeat visit to Frederick's for lunch, then went onto Artisan Roast, where I had another coffee in a fabulous atmosphere of roasting coffee and warm air. It's one of those places which attracts the dreadlocked cool Forest Cafe-type folk, but I got the contact info I needed, and will set up a meeting to talk training and supply.

I have so much to learn. But it's all do-able; it's a project, and I'll project-manage myself ruthlessly.

I am stunned that I'm leaving work in seven days. And utterly, utterly delighted.

woooooo

I'm having a wobble.

This will, I suspect, be this first of many, but it feels like a major one. I've been burned by the intertubes once this year already, so I'm not about to spill all my wobbles into the vast ocean of outpourings that washes around us all, but suffice to say that my day-job and I have reached an agreement whereby it barely tolerates me, and I detest it with a rather surprising degree of passion. Add to that my still-unsold house, my apparent inability to find any other work and a consequent desire to get into bed and stay there, and I suppose it's hardly surprising that I've developed a complete crisis of confidence.

I swing wildly from telling myself that setting up a business based on food is not rocket science, and the fact I don't have a catering qualification simply doesn't matter, and me telling myself off for even thinking that I'm capable of doing this, because I don't have a catering qualification and have never worked in a commercial kitchen. Do I want to risk all that we have only to fall flat on my face and then have to suffer the indignity of telling myself later "I told you that would happen?"

So, I'm wobbling. I'm really not sure this is a good idea.

Perhaps I'll go and make some soup.

Stephen Fry's Oasis soup joke

After reading Nigel Slater's recipe for spelt rolls, and being intrigued about using fresh yeast, I tried to find some. Not easy, actually, even in a capital city. The interwebs found it for me.

I picked up this book in Oxfam last Sunday:


and liked the cheese rolls recipe. Of course I changed it. Weirdly, we had no mousetrap cheese (well we did have a cubic inch left, but not for long), and I'd run out of mustard seeds, so I added Parmesan and tons of pepper, and some olives for good measure.

Fresh yeast smells great. Sadly, that's lost on a blog, but here's the lovely stuff anyway.



The rest went as easily as following a recipe:






It's hard to make uncooked bread dough look good in a picture. Especially when you're trying not to get flour down the camera switches.




This is easier, though:




And this is a John Lewis-style lifestyle pic. Warm, freshly-pulled-apart bread, piled artlessly in a ceramic bowl, with 'stuff' in the background. All these types of images have random piles of desirable stuff in the background, carelessly out of focus but looking clean, neat and like it belongs in the house that waits for you, when your salary has octupled and you have a life transplant. In my case, it's the focus of the shot that's out of focus.



Better not employ may camera skills for Union, then. But the bread skills are not that bad.

These rolls were gorgeous. And even better the next day, toasted for breakfast. The Parmesan was strong the next day, and fabulous. For future ref; needs more olives, it does need the damned mustard seed, and we really need to wait until the bread is less than nuclear before ripping it apart.



Stephen Fry's Oasis joke was, of course, "You gotta roll with it."

Setting up the setting up stage

Right now, I'm playing. And that feels great. I'm tinkering with my business plan, which means I'm doing all the fun descriptive bits and avoiding the harder, demographic analysis and marketing bits. I'm looking at crockery online, and considering colourways. I'm looking at packaging solutions which I freely admit even now that my wants are likely to be waaaaaaay beyond my wallet. But I'm playing, so it doesn't matter right now.

I have a domain name. I have ordered fresh yeast and when that arrives, I'll start trialling bread recipes, even though I have no intention of making my own bread. But this blog will be, I think, my own record of my experiments in the kitchen, at the PC and in research. Hopefully, it'll wind up being the gleaming shop window from the Union of Genius kitchen onto the world outside. Even if it turns out to be a tiny, filthy garret window with a restricted view of cracked slates and urban pigeons, though, it'll be a fun process.