The Rock and a Hard Place

Halfway during this week I deleted my last blog. It was boring anyway. The kiss of death always seems to be when I mention that things seem to be going well. I think I even used the word 'calm'.

Silly me for saying this in the last week in January. I should have known better.

I wont bore you with the details but things really sucked by Tuesday this week. After a particularly brutal day of  maneuvering ones way through boot-faced bank clerks and other important lower-middle-management, I'd completely had enough. "Fuck this" I said to my partner-husband that night on the balcony "This is too hard. I quit." .
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"Have another glass of wine, sweetie" said the exhausted but pragmatic Baker.

"No" said I (unusually) "I'm taking a handful of sleeping pills and I might just not KILL ANYONE tomorrow, but I'm not promising".

On Wednesday things got even worse. When I tried to understand why we had another banking bloodbath on our hands (remember we have no banking clearing house here. Everything  is done by cheque) I had one too many proverbial fingers waved in my face. The word "violated banking rules" was mentioned. This because we had the audacity to write outgoing 'checks' before all incoming 'checks' (which take between 6 -12 days to clear) had cleared. Please note the word all.  On an average week we must bank about 100 cheques and write out at least 30. You try tracking that on your daily cash flows. Of course we don't have any overdraft facility. Don't be silly.

A red mist came over my eyes. I tried to count to 3. I did not manage.

"I'm trying to run a business here, honey" I hissed. It was not one of my best lines or one of my finer moments.

"But you cannot run a business Mrs Dawson if you violate banking rules, and you have violated banking rules, therefore we cannot allow you to violate banking rules, which you have violated".

I defy anybody to come back with a rational response to that.

"GET ME THE BANK MANAGER" I screamed inwardly as I swept myself away with as much righteous indignation as I could muster.

That night as I seethed on the balcony and comforted myself with a bit of rubbish chocolate, my front tooth crown fell out.

I looked like a witch.

At 8:30am on Thursday morning I found myself in the Big Corner Office, one very angry crone.  The AC purred, the carpets were spotless, the Bank Manager looked like he actually cared. It felt like being with a Father Confessor. I wailed out 18 months worth of banking frustration. I topped it with the 'violations' story of the previous day . The esteemed gentleman actually cringed and we all had a good laugh. Then I pulled myself together and said "not so funny if you're trying to RUN A BUSINESS'. No, they agreed quickly, not so funny. Sorry.

Ways Forward were agreed. Paths were smoothed. Hands were shaken. I went off to the dentist. Nobody died.

Hell hath no fury than a menopausal Bakers Wife with a missing front tooth, as a few people found out this week. I do believe I might have been just a little bit scary.

New York Essay's

We really had the best time in New York despite credit card nightmares, sporting injuries and an apocalyptic flight home. It was great to catch up as a family and with the world again and some of our favourite times were just spent hanging out in our apartment in front of the TV eating pizza.

We did all the usual things like the Natural Science Museum and Rockefeller Plaza and some new ones  like a walk along the fabulous Highline and ice skating at the just-opened Le Frac Centre in Prospect Park. We also spent a lot of time eating, especially bread.

New York has set off my creative writing juices and I've been working on some articles in amidst catching up the bakery accounts and trying to get 2014 up and running.

Here are some of the synopses of the essay's that I am writing.  It's a terrifying leap from cosy blog (where I am publisher, editor and writer) but writing is something that I enjoy doing and am now spending real time on. I am fiercely pushing back my fear of self promotion and say Be Damned & Get Published - my personal ambition for 2014.

So here we go: Off Island New York Essays:

A Sense of Place: The Apple Store on Fifth Avenue

A New York visit now seems to include the compulsory pilgrimage to the Apple iStore especially if your family consists of 4 boys, like mine.

The location is perfect as the store manages to combine West Coast 'wholesomeness' from the nearby Central Park, upscale retail from Fifth Ave and perpetual play from FAO Schwarz, all in one subterranean 24/7 Cape Canaveral-like epicentre.

I thoroughly enjoyed Walter Issacson's biograghy of Steve Jobs in which he wrote extensively about the design process behind the iStore. We also see the Job's mega yacht 'Venus' regularly here in our island waters and she really is spectacular, like a floating iPod.  Our interest in retail experience has increased lately beyond that of mere shopping, as owners of a (possibly the smallest in the world) bakery shop and the desire to expand in the near future - so we really were looking forward to seeing the shop.

Despite the crowds, the iStore is quite a pleasing spatial interpretation of the whole Apple design ethos thing. Sort of.  It's almost monastic in it's minimalist design, reinforced by the wooden refectory tables and lack of visual merchandising - halfway between university library, Japanese farmhouse and Gap mega-store without the loud music and hoodie jackets.

It also happens to be the most profitable retail sales space per unit area in the world. So whilst it might look like a small version of Pei's Pyramid at the Louvre, it's all pure profit genius. This must be what gives it it's rather soulless and disconnected feeling then - more Temple to Mammon, which no amount of contrived pseudo Zen a la Palo Alto can mask, than Stanford Think Tank . It's just a shop, in other words. Why were we surprised then, is actually the significant question to ask here.

For the record, James bought a red iPod Nano and the Russian girl in front of us bought 10 iPads and 18 unblocked iPhones.

The Rise of the Puffa Jacket: Uniqlo

Since we spend most of our time living in flip flops and shorts, I was dying to buy some new Winter clothes. I spent several hours at the new Uniqlo flagship store on Fifth Avenue and ended up with a lovely brown puffy vest - not something I'll be wearing too much for a while, but very handy in the sub-zero temperatures in New York.

Since all the clothes on our island look like they come out of the same bargain basement warehouse in Dubai and it is hard not to find anything that isn't either animal print, gold or dayglow, it was a bit overwhelming to find oneself surrounded by 3 floors of pastel cashmere jersey's and puffa jackets in every hue, shape and size - all gorgeous and all desirable.

Uniqlo is a new phenomenon to me, although it now ranks up there in the Big Retail 5 along with H & M and Gap.  The Fifth Avenue store is just so cool with it's stripped down Japanese aesthetic, cosmic music and twinkly rainbow lights that I simply did not feel like a middle-aged mum shopping for a raincoat, far more the  style maven that I wish to be and pretended I was for one very enjoyable afternoon.

But what is it with with the incredible rise of the puffa jacket? No self-respecting middle class mother (who dosn't live in the Tropics) would now be seen dead without one at the school pick-up (me included) - a bit like the ubiquitous black velvet headband of about 20 years ago.  I'm not very up on my fashion, but I would hazard a guess that it's a combination of the Nineties clubby/hip hop thing when every spotty white youf in London seemed to sport a big black puffy version - combined with the Sloane Ranger-Hermes-scarf-country- thing, before Range Rovers became the pimp mobile of choice.

So the cool, gangsta WASP mother look then. Love it. So Me.

Middle Aged Barbie

When I was growing up in the Cape Town suburbs, Barbies, Sindies and Skippers were at the centre of my little-girl universe.  I used to pine desperately for all the pink convertibles, ponies and accessories that were not available in sanction-ridden South Africa and many hours were spent pouring over 'Pink' magazine plotting our virtual Barbie Empire - cruelly only 'Available Overseas'.

Whilst the boys were off stocking up with Weapons of Mass Nerfdom in FAO Schwarz last week, I sidled off to find Barbie Flagship Heaven, merely to find a few miserable boxes pushed far into a dead end corner with not a Bridal Barbie or Dolly Varden dressing table in sight.

I was shocked and disappointed. All I could find was horrible Drag Queen Barbie and ridiculous Cheerleader Barbie (in gross pink & purple) and even more hideous Pooch Parlour Barbie and my absolute worst (see below) Cupcake Chef Barbie. Vomit.

I was so upset I went and found dragged Tyler reluctantly away from the ballistics and his comment was "no Astronaut Barbie then or Investment Banker Barbie, maybe?"

Definitely not. Barbie now appears to be a complete loser.

So after a bit of Googling  I found out that poor old Barbie really has lost her way, despite still being the highest grossing toy on the planet and the Monster High vampy Twilight Zone dollies which are rapidly replacing her, day by day.

Notwithstanding Barbie's apparently limited career choices and a complete lack of vision from her 'owners?'-   it seems as if  Barbie may have lost the politically correct war . It's 2014: We are clearly living in a Post Feminist Post Barbie Age where only creepy Liberace lookalikes collect Barbie accessories and silly Ukrainian girls have freaky plastic surgery to look like Barbie and frankly it's all just become so unwholesome.

So Not Barbie.

As a former management consultant I'd like to offer my services to Mattel to re-invent my old friend. If Miley Cyrus can do it, then surely so can Barbie?

Cupcakes and the Feminisation of Bakeries

Patisseries have always been the pretty side of bakeries with their luscious displays of fruit tarts and petit fours. Artisanal bakeries tend to be quite macho places, all wood and hemp and no-nonsense shelves of crusty boules and baguettes.

Until the cupcake came along that is. Now bakeries appear to be a bit confused mixing up serious sourdough pain de campagnes along with all the frou-frou M1 swirls, not to great effect it has to be said. I think it's the cult of cuteness that irritates me so much: all the rip-off Cath Kitson and the ubiquitous polka dot, quasi retro suburbanness that is so deeply unoriginal, all of which I'm really tired of.

I did visit Magnolia Bakery in New York (Tyler declined) to try and understand the whole cupcake craze, twice actually: The first time the queue stretched around the block and there were bouncers at the door letting one  person in at a time and on the second attempt the place looked so much like Scotia Bank on a Friday afternoon, I quickly gave up and left as I have far too much of that fun already.

I'm no cupcake virgin. Page 40 of my copy of Nigella Lawson's 'How to be a Domestic Goddess' is badly spocked with vanilla extract (not essence) and I've baked my fair share of cupcakes along with the best of them. It's hard to understand however how the humble 'fairy cake' became listed on the NYSE and why serious bakeries and bakers feel they need to 'cutesify' themselves with these slightly silly cakes.

Magnolia Bakery looked very normal by the way, like any other bakery. Nothing special - apart from the bouncers at the door and the Magnolia Curio Store attached. Go to a museum, I say. Or a nightclub. Not a flipping cupcake bakery.

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Tyler says I need an ending: New York Essays 2 will be out shortly, once I've finished folding the laundry and packed the dishwasher. And got through Monday. And Tuesday....