Pushing (kitchen) doors

So, some movement on the Christmas baking front! It's possible I may have found a kitchen...

Given that not having a proper (by which I mean registered with Environmental Health) place to bake has been one of the major barriers to putting my ideas into practice, this is no small achievement. Earlier this week I emailed round a few local churches (of which there are many locally!) to see if anyone had a kitchen they'd be prepared to hire out for a whole day a week in September, October and November. The first reply I got was an encouraging 'Interesting - come and have a look and a chat', so today I headed round, trying not to get my hopes up too high. In a nutshell it was all very positive but I sense this is just the beginning of a long-ish road that will no doubt have it's challenges and frustrations.

One thing it has made me realise is that regardless of how generous they (or somewhere else) are prepared to be with their hire charges, renting someone else's kitchen is going to have a significant financial impact on how things develop from here. It means I'm going to have to sell a lot of stuff. A lot. That means I'm going to have to produce a really good, but probably very small, product range, and then I'm going to have to market it really well. And that means I'm going to be heavily reliant on you lovely, lovely people to help me get the word out.

Now I'm home my head is full of ideas about mince pie tasting packs that will survive in the post, new variations on tried and tested classics, making lists of people, places and organisations who might promote what I'm hoping to do.

It feels like I might be creeping just a little bit closer to something a little bit exciting.

2013 Arms Fair

I've blogged about the bi-annual arms fair, held at London's ExCel centre, before, but since the next one is due to take place in less than two months time it seems appropriate to flag it up again.

Last week I had dinner with friends (and former colleagues) from Custom House who have campaigned against the Defence and Security Exhibition since it began in 2001. They told me that while there are people who are planning to peacefully demonstrate at ExCel during the arms fair, there won't be anywhere near the numbers that turned out a decade ago.

Somehow, for some reason, the fact that there is a weapons trade fair in east London no longer exercises people.

It struck me as we chatted that back in 2001 - and in 2003, 2005 (and 2007 to some extent) - social media didn't exist in the way it does now. Just six years ago, it was quite possible for something like this to go under the radar (no pun intended) because it largely managed to stay out of the mainstream media.

Now there's no excuse for people not to be informed.

I'm trying to work out how I can take a stand against the arms fair and I'll endeavour to share my thoughts. For now, just letting people know it's happening is the most important thing I can do - would you help me?

Birmingham, Brick Lane, Brighton

It's six weeks since I last blogged. On the one hand, not a lot has happened in that time; on the other, I've had some interesting conversations, discovered some new organisations and initiatives and even had a meeting at the seaside!

Not a lot has happened in the sense that my circumstances remain as they were six weeks ago - still working five days a fortnight, still living on the generosity of friends and family. But on the back of that last blog post I emailed a whole list of people who I know to be interesting and who have fingers in interesting pies and asked them to tell me about the interesting things that they know about. This was largely in an attempt to put into action point 6 of my options list from last time:

Seeing if there are any community initiatives / churches who are looking to develop projects around baking - a café, community bakery etc - who I could team up with to shape some kind of social enterprise.

The result was as interesting as I'd hoped. I discovered Devenishgirl Bakery, a baking social enterprise in Birmingham; I visited Kahaila, café church in the middle of east London's Brick Lane; I found out more about Florence Road Market, hosted by One Church Brighton in, er, Brighton; I met up with sourdough baker Jessica Edmonds of Leicester Born and Bread who has, rather marvellously, offered to give me some of her sourdough starter free and gratis; I heard about London Reclaimed, a recycled furniture social enterprise in Peckham; I was introduced to Flavour Gateway in Tower Hamlets. I've heard about churches being challenged about social enterprise as a way of responding to changes in the way they're funded and how they serve their communities, about the importance of sharing food together as the people of God. And I've discovered a whole load of new blogs and small businesses doing lovely things in lovely ways with lovely people.

And in amongst those new encounters I got to exchange emails and share coffee with affirming and encouraging people, the value of which really can't be over-estimated. But the reality is that none of this has offered any kind of solution to the very practical challenges of earning a living, which brings me to option 5 from last time:

Starting my own business. I've been doing a lot of baking recently and have realised that I really enjoy it and, it appears, I'm moderately good at it. However, this requires a kitchen which I don't have.

The more I explore this, the more hoops I become aware of. But now's a good time to start thinking about Christmas (wait, come back, let me finish!!) and given that I've already tested the market for fair trade mince pies I'm giving serious thought to finding some kitchen space to rent one day a week in September, October and November, focusing on Christmas cakes and mince pies and seeing what transpires. I've been in touch with a few local churches to find out about renting kitchen space, and on Thursday I'll get my Christmas baking thinking cap on and wait for inspiration to strike.

I'll be honest - I'm at the point at the moment where it doesn't take much for any crumb of enthusiasm I have for, well, quite a lot of things to dissolve into the ether but then I read articles like this, tell myself to get a grip and try really hard to count my blessings, of which there are many. But if you are of a praying disposition I'd appreciate you chucking a couple up for me. When I was on my year out, my insightful but not entirely pastorally sensitive church leaders regularly told me when faced with challenging circumstances that I'd look back and realise what I'd learnt. They were, of course, absolutely right.