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.
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