Announcing the Union favicon

Here it is. My fab friend Pauline has been busy designing and assembling the Union website. It's odd - because the whole look and feel of Union has been crystallising slowly in my head for a few months now, I'm utterly familiar with what I want and how I want things to look. Pauline, though, builds websites - "out of concepts and thin air", as she memorably put it, which meant she had to create a webspace which looked like the thing that was only in my head. And get it right. She's done a spectacular job, too. She's captured the clarity and space I like on a website.

It's a work-in-progress at the moment - not Pauline's work-in-progress, though - I want to get pictures of the shop on the site, but if I posted images of the scummy slum which the shop is at the moment, all prospective customers would scarper. Right now, the shop is the perfect 'before' picture. All it lacks is an 'after' - but that's on it's way. The shopfit is imminent, and then Union will emerge green, sleek and gorgeous from the filth and grime. More on the shopfit will follow (a lot more...)

And in other news, I went to a vegware party recently, and met a lovely lady who has just moved to Edinburgh from a few years in Hungary. We got talking soups, surprisingly enough, and today she sent me a recipe for guylas, as cooked by the Hungarians. I made it today, as cooked by a Scottish soupmonger:



and that's going straight onto the Union playlist. Although it leaves me with a bit of a dumpling issue. Leave dumplings in the soup too long, and they go soggy. Leave them out for too long, and they go soggy and stodgy. Extensive dumpling research will have to be carried out, until a solution is found. Oh, the slings and arrows...

A serendipitous colour-matchy day, with Opecat

I have been sending off for a ridiculous quantity of fabric samples - I am creating a proper window-seat for folk to sit on, curl up on, look out at the world through big windows from and browse the webs from. But not, sad to say, enjoy the company of cats from - I suspect Environmental Health would have a view on that which differs from the cat cafes of Japan. Anyway, anyone who knows me knows that I do colour-matching. So, having settled on my fabrics - making my own window-seat upholstery, of course - I needed a patterned set of cushions or fabrics to back it up with. So, behind Opus cat, on the floor, there's my set of fabric samples I've settled on.

And today I found the perfect mix of patterned cushions and plain chenille ones. In British Home Stores. Did someone re-engineer that store while I wasn't looking? Because they are ACE. Great fabrics, beautiful colours and amazing prices. Honestly, I'm not on a retainer. But I'll be shopping there again. Isn't it fabulous when a plan comes together? And do I need to mention how brilliantly they match my fabric samples? Maybe not. Maybe I do, considering how well they are hidden behind the moglet's feet. But I do have to say how fabulous their staff were in chasing down a damson-coloured cushion which the Princes Street branch didn't have, but the Cameron Toll branch did. Thanks, ladies, you were the epitome of great customer service.

I am having too much fun. Shhh.

On how the life lived has overtaken the life penned - or, why this blog has effortlessly time-travelled five months.

A shorter and more accurate post title would be 'oh, bugger'.

This was going to be the written account of setting up Scotland's first soup cafe - something which either would, or wouldn't, happen, depending on the vagaries of fate, life and cashflow. After walking away from the opportunity of a lifetime to create a shop from an empty shell in a disused basement in an unloved corner of Edinburgh, I went into a slow but noticeable decline, which ended up with me applying for jobs as I was sure, very sure, that I simply wasn't going to find my perfect-sized property in my perfect location at a rent I could afford to pay.

And then suddenly I did.

Until the lease is signed, the location is a secret, but the lease will be signed in the next few days. The rent is under my budget. The property enjoys a rateable value lower than the business rates limit. It's the right size. There's a big kitchen in there already. It has big windows, and a really good feel about it. The landlord is lovely, supportive, businesslike and fair. And all of this is going to be turned into Union.

The last few months have been a round of websites (discovering your oldest pal is now a website designer is very useful), catering suppliers (the house is now full of not-perfect bowls and cutlery I didn't like after all), cake suppliers, print suppliers, composting companies, enormously expensive coffee machine companies and art companies and now, after a ten year gap, I am painting blackboards again, but this time for my own shop. The till arrived today, and if anything can make this whole enterprise seem terrifyingly real, it's the arrival of a brand-new till, complete with it's own thousand-page manual. Unbounded joy. Actually, it will be, once I learn how to work it.

I am having a lot of fun and a lot of fear, but the fun is most definitely winning. I will post a pic of the blackboard once I remember where I put it. The picture. It's quite hard to lose an A1 blackboard.