It's taken me some time to get around to actually writing this blog post and in all honesty, I was starting to think I wouldn't ever write it.
It is 2.50 am and I've just baked some profiteroles, I'm not ready for bed yet so I started the now nightly ritual of deciding which pointless time wasting activity to absorb myself in for the next couple of hours. I was going to do some cross stitching but I decided that actually, I'm ready to start putting some of my thoughts and feelings down in to words. So, I'm here writing this blog and hoping that I can some how bring everything together in a way that people will understand. I'll try not to blabber on, and I'll try really hard not to cry because I actually haven't done that yet. Surprisingly! I'm an incredibly emotional person, I'm not scared or ashamed to admit that because whilst it has often been a curse and a bit of a character flaw, it is also one of the things that makes me good at what I do. My customers, particularly my wedding couples, often say in reviews that I am approachable, friendly and, above all else, I am passionate. I think that's part of my struggle right now, I need something to drive me and ordinarily that would come from creating orders and meeting with brides and grooms, right now I don't have that. I've sought other areas to give me that same drive and to extract something from to keep my passion ignited but it is so hard. I do a weekly Live Bake Along on my Facebook page which helps enormously. It keeps me occupied and almost feels like socialising as I have interaction with others and I know it's helpful to those who join in every week, (I love seeing all of your bakes and there will definitely be more blog posts about what we've been up to each week!) I've also been baking loads just for fun which I haven't done in years! And I haven't baked cakes, other than for my children's birthdays earlier this month. In stead I've been doing biscuits and cookies and duffins and profiteroles, I've revisited some much loved recipe books by Mary Berry and Eric Lanlard and it has definitely fully relighted the flame in me for baking! I'm also planning a wedding but that is a story for another day.
April was set to be my busiest month of the year with five weddings, two big birthday cake orders plus my own children's birthdays too. All of that disappeared the week lock-down came in.
Throughout January I was overwhelmed with inquiries for wedding cakes, my first two consultation days of the year were fully booked and I some how ended up with double the number of weddings for 2020 compared to previous years. I was elated with how busy I was and excited to get creating all of the amazing cake designs I had ahead. By March the virus was dominating the press more with each passing day. One of my grooms contacted me to say there may be some issues with their Summer wedding due to the Bride working abroad. I still believed weddings would not be impacted. When social distancing came in I started to think that we were most likely heading towards a lock-down situation. I implemented strategies for coping with operating during social distancing and I had two orders collected the week before lock-down which were done without contact.
Then Boris Johnson announced lock-down.