Sunday afternoon

I'm just about to make myself a cup of tea and as a special Sunday afternoon treat, watch The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (for the Aged & Beautiful) again, which is a lovely film about a group of more advanced citizens who end up in India. The cast includes Bill Nighy, Maggie Smith and Judi Dench amongst others - and if  you haven't seen it, you simply must.  

It's been another good week and although we seem to end up in a little puddle of exhaustion by Friday, we are definitely starting to adjust to the hours and "full-on-ess" of running our own business with a busy family. The bakery is getting better and better everyday.In the past week we've added rosemary seasalt foccacia, soda bread and carrot cake to our daily list. On Friday we made white chocolate mousse cake, rose madelaines (having one now with my tea, gorgeous) blackberry & star anise friands and little sea dollar sugar biscuits.

The amazing news news is (and we're feeling very cautious about getting too optimistic just to have our hopes dashed) but we may have found our perfect little outlet/cafe. We will know in the next few days and then  the hard work REALLY begins - as we pretty much have to gut the place and redo it ourselves at night and over weekends, due to our miniscule budget. The children are just about to add paint stripping and plastering to their growing list of business skills they are acquiring along with grating, icing and carrying.

We've had a very social weekend too: A big braai on Friday night which turned into a complete party and which was a fairly painful way to start Saturday morning and then some friends around for dinner last night here, which was a lovely evening.   Most of our affairs are very informal with children usually banging around somewhere, but last night we polished the silver and got out the good glasses.  For some reason I always think that souffles are the epitome of Grown Up Dinner Parties, although this may be because I grew up in the Seventies, but Tyler executed a rather brilliant cheffy recovery, after I botched the tart citron and he whipped it up into a delicious lemon souffle - which felt a bit serendipitous.

Another highlight of the week was receiving my nephew Myles's cookbook at the post office. Felt very emotional as I read it and seeing Jane & Myles in it. They have a lovely restaurant on the West Coast of Ireland in Strandshill, Co. Sligo and have worked extremely hard and done so well. A lot of the illustrations are done by Myles's sister Paula, who lives in Melbourne (we are scattered to the 4 corners, we really are) so a real family affair.

OK, off to go and fall asleep on the sofa.

Quiet Fireworks

It's been a good week. Although we still havn't got the 'eating early/going to bed early' routine quite right yet (the children have learnt that we dine like Mediterranean Families i.e late) there is a semblance of some new order kicking in.

The bakery is going like a rocket and we are hoping to have our new patissier starting very shortly.   We are hunting for an outlet as we need something bigger and our poor customers have to endure the bakery oven temperatures which climb to over 45C somedays. The cupcakes melt, the icing slides out of the cakes and one feels close to self-combusting. September is the hottest month of the year on the island, but the hotter it is the more it keeps the hurricanes away - so I'll live with the heat, thanks.

On the domestic front, Saint Claudette of Jamaica did take mercy on us and return, and we now have a sparkling clean house. This makes me indescribably happy. Wo betide any man, beast or child who does anything now to upset this apple cart. I have pointed out, at great length and volume, that life would not be worth living.

This week is our wedding anniversary. I've had a blissfully quiet Sunday morning looking through our wedding album and I just can't stop smiling. What struck me was what an incredibly happy day it was. In every photo everyone is smiling and laughing their heads off, despite the fact that it was feezing cold (there was snow on the mountains in Cape Town in Spring).

I realised pretty quickly that I had married someone extra special when Tyler managed to persuade the hotel to allow fireworks at midnight (they are banned in Franschoek as it's a valley bowl and noise reverberates) as he promised they were "quiet ones". I think we woke up every dog between Franschoek and Stellenbosch and half the poulation (who thought the revolution may have just started after all) and Tyler had quite a bit of fast talking to do the next morning!

Here's to you Liefie. You've never stopped charming me (and everyone else) after all these years.

Week Two: Mission Normalising with an excellent Sunday thrown in

Week Two of the bakery being open and we're still standing, but only just.

I always thought we knew what hard work was, but all of before now feels like 'kindergaarten' or 'school fees' or whatever other metaphor one would choose to describe the past 25 years subordinate to the Real McCoy: Start-up bakery business, job, 3 kids and until today (drum rolllllll please!) ....no help. But that has changed as we now have the wonderful Claudette in our lives. I think I may have just become Claudette's Mercy Mission: "Goodniss meee, dis house is beeeeg. Ah ma 'lord, it's Dirteeee!" I am completely terrified that she will not come back again. We've already been fired by a cleaner once before. Hold thumbs for Saturday, when she is meant to join us again.

So the Bakery is up and running and we are very happy about this state of affairs.  The Baker gets up every morning  at 3:30am to get to the bakery by 4:30am to have the first bread out of the oven by 6:30am, in time to get the second baking in before the first lot runs out. It's all good. Really very satisifyingly, humbingly, gratifyingly good.  Hopefully we have another new baker starting in 2 weeks time and we are also looking hard for our bakery outlet premises. We need both very much and soon.

Saturday was spent doing either bakery (the baker) housework (the bakers wife) or parties (the bakers children). On Saturday night we all fell asleeep almost face down into our braaied ribs and baked potatoes.

Sunday was actually a Perfect Island Day, thanks to the McCallums, Bonnie & Paul with re-Action and their lovely friends Larry & Cindy. We sailed off to Peter Island on the 55' Cat with 6 families including 10 kids. I thought this was pretty brave of Bonnie & Paul. We moored off Peter and the kids kayaked, snorkelled and swam to their hearts content whilst a group of grown-ups took a rib dinghy over to the "Rhone" wreck for a dive. It was a wonderful, wonderful day with lunch set out on the beach for us and a lazy afternoon spent jumping off the boat and swanning around.

The Dawson Clan, who were 'Sundaying' the hardest of all - just needed this bit of time out after a few gruelling weeks. It was as we had wished it to be: hard work during the week and family time over the weekend. A perfect day which just happened and can never be ordered, which are of course the best ones of all.

Here are some photos:

Family Epic

On Wednesday, after months and months of delays and frustration - we finally opened Family Food & Bakery.

Tyler was in at 4am to start the ovens and the Carrot Bay Satellite Kitchen was baking muffins and pie fillings. As the previous 72 hours had been a jumble of shopping and deliveries (fridges, flour, The Till, signs, labels etc) just about the last thing we had managed to get round to was the ......food.

We were so focused on trying to get everything ready that we hardly noticed our first customer at 7:31am. At the back of my mind I had a sense that this was a fairly historic moment and greeted him with a huge smile and a very loud "Welcome!" Our VIP then proceeded to mumble "Top Up Airtime and beer?" to which I had to, very disappointingly,  say "no, but wouldn't you like some freshly baked bread instead"? His reply was a fairly abrupt "nah" and walked out! Not a very auspicious start to our dream business but still a start nevertheless.

The past 4 days have passed in a blur. It's been a rollercoaster of heat, exhaustion, delight and an overwhelming relief that not only are we finally open but that we've been well supported.

It was probably a bit naive of us to think that we could slip under the radar with a soft opening  before the season officially starts again (1 October). We've sold out everyday with customers waiting patiently for things to come out of the oven. We are still in a building site and until some key things have been completed we cannot really employ staff. Knowing that this was always going to be the compromise (ie. keep waiting for the building to finish sometime-never or go bankrupt before we'd even opened) we chose this route.  We just have to keep going now and trust that it will all work out. 

James, left, in red vest and Georgie centre.  Photo Ed Childs.

On the family-family front, the boys have been racing all weekend with the RBVIYC 'Back to School' Regatta. Georgie got his first 'bullet' (came first in a race) ever in Green Fleet and James came a very respectable 16th overall.

Today we've tried to take it a bit easy before we get going again and I've sort of lost the Battle of the Houseas we're wading through a weeks worth of school clothes and nutty animal mess (Gracie shredded all our porcupine quills, for example, and downstairs now looks like a Graaf Reniet farmhouse).  A very concerted effort is needed to find a new cleaner before the house goes completely feral. [Postscript: Saturday. Huzzar!].

As all we had focused on was getting the bakery up and running on Wednesday, we've not thought too much about our new life as Mr & Mrs Baker & Kids. The reality is going to be a master class in juggling, scheduling and low level flying as we keep the show on the road. After 6 months of soul destroying stop/start wheel spinning this is a delightful 'problem' to have, however and we just cannot keep the smiles off our faces and the incredible feeling of knowing that we've finally done it - we opened the bakery!

An epic week for our family.

Where's my holiday gone?

Recently Betty Friedan has been much invoked in  multiple articles about our over-devotion to our children, the "trafficking in exhibitionism" that is Facebook and our tedious 'Real Simple' stylista ways which compel us to perfect the minutiae of our lives -  and how Betty must be rolling in her grave at what disappointing female revolutionaries we've all turned out to be (although Betty would have been the first one moralising on Twitter, m'thinks).

I'm guilty on all accounts of the above (and since you're reading my blog, I suppose so are you) but I do agree with Katie Roiphe in the FT when she says that although our parents loved us as much as we love ours, we played around the margins whilst they got on with their lives as opposed to this slavish scheduling we grind our way through with simmering resentment (well I do anyway) which is contemporary parenting. With school starting again on Tuesday I'm working on reinstating Sixties-style parenting  techniques which saw my parents, for example, moaning about having to occasionally drop me off at Sunday School (I wanted to go to church, they didn't) as it interfered with a leisurely Sunday breakfast, a spot of lawn mowing and some newspaper reading.

So I'd like to apologise unequivocally upfront for yet another set of beautiful photographs of our perfect summer holiday featuring happy children, relaxed parents, white sands, aqua sea, cocktails, lobster, boats and tropical islands. I did try hard not to glamorise anything although I do admit to deleting a few that showed too much cellulite and double chins - but the resulting album is pretty much the way it was.

I'm not exaggerating when I say it felt like the Smite Button had been pushed as we battled tropical depressions (mine) and storms, cancelled sailing boats, delayed flights, flat tires (both cars simultaneously) flat batteries, new businesses and a few other minor things which we steadfastly ignored in our determination to have one week of holidays with our visiting friends. Although we lost out on our sailing holiday on the floating gin palace (which went off to the hurricane shelter and never came back) we were able to revert to a mixture of Plan C & D, which saw us going off in 'Grace' (the boat not the cat) on Sunday morning. Although we had a very bumpy Channel crossing, the minute we hit the Baths the sun burst out, the clouds disappeared and the sea dropped at least 2 feet. Everyone was happy. Me most of all.

We trawled around the North Sound visiting Leverick Bay, Oil Nut Bay, Prickly Pear (for a spot of camping again) and then on to Anegada which was perfection itself.

The boys swam and snorkeled, guzzled coconut water, went night fishing, charged up and down coral beaches, jumped off jetties and had a wonderful time. The parents, in true Sixties-style were able to ignore the kids focusing instead on whether to have a Painkiller or a Dark & Stormy as we devoured our Kindles and occasionally flopped into the sea to cool off.



Despite the logistics of moving this tribe around, the gross amount of wet towels which were generated (and now have to be washed) and the continuous stream of "Mommy where's my snorkel/shoes/hat/rashie/sunglasses/camera/baggies/flippers?" etc it was a wonderful holiday. The stars seemed to align, everyone got on with having fun and it all just fell in to place for a few glorious days.

My remaining question is "where's my holiday gone then"? It's all over so quickly. Susan & the boys have gone, Kathy has gone and we open the bakery on Wednesday. Whoosh. Just like that. Summer gone. Holidays over.

 So here's a slice of it - a Flickr stream of happiness.