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.