Welcome to Easter

Today Naomi delivered the first of our Simnel cakes. 

We love them. 

Customers love them. 

They look like this. 

Fault line

Card machine was out of action again until 2.30 yesterday afternoon.
Liam said it was the most frustrating job he’s ever worked on.
He won’t forget us in a hurry as he was working on it for three days.
I am amazed that so many people still carry cheque books.
Thank goodness.

Countdown Conundrum

Originally the date we were leaving the EU was the end of March so for weeks the daily news gave me a rather helpful countdown to the start of our season.
As a result I was more organised than I’ve ever been.
Now the EU has given us a new deadline.
The last week of October.
Which is when we close for Winter.
On my way home yesterday a commentator said “we have twenty eight weeks until the end of October”.
Twenty eight weeks of the season left.
Will our cake ballot box have to come out of storage in that time?

All sorts.

We remained without a card machine for much of the day (cue scrabbling around for change and hidden notes in the bottom of bags and pockets) but outreach engineer Liam thinks he may have found the problem and we took two whole card payments before we closed.
A warmer, sunnier day during which a customer told me how she likes to dress up her two dogs in fairy outfits.

Line of Duty

The phone hasn’t worked for two days.
Calls are being diverted to my mobile but the bigger issue is that the card machine (which uses the phone line) hasn’t worked for two days.
This can be a real problem since most of us don’t carry much cash any more.
Today two customers came up with their own solution. They transferred money straight to our account from their phones.
Isn’t technology rubbish/wonderful?

Bob’s your uncle

Saturday.
The sun was shining and we expected to be busy but we were surprised by a group of lycra clad cyclists who arrived before we’d even opened.
I couldn’t turn them away.
Cyclists are cake eaters.
A couple arrived soon after, “We followed the cyclists,” they said, “they always know the best places for refreshments.”
Then another couple.
We still hadn’t officially opened.
Then a man and his dog came in.
“I’m in shock,” was his opening statement, “I’ve just found my own name on a headstone in the churchyard. Robert Ward. It says he died in the mid 19th century.”
I told him the Wards were the Earls of Dudley, and this could be his ancestral home. He looked sceptical.
“I think we’d have been the poor relations,” he said.

I went in early this morning to set up because my Australian friend, Kendall, whom I haven’t seen since we were teenagers, was coming to visit. I wanted to be able to have as long as possible to catch up with her before the lunchtime rush. Lauren said she’d hold the fort behind the counter and would come and get me if she needed to.
Kendall, her friend Siobhan and I sat in the conservatory drinking coffee and talking about odd names for children.
Lauren came to my table at about 11o’clock.
Bearing news.
The environmental health officer had arrived to do an inspection.
(Deep. Breath.)
I answered his questions, showed him what he asked to see, wondered what he was thinking, worried I’d missed something.
He went to sit down to complete his report.
Then he called me over.
We went through his comments.
Then he said it was lucky for me that it was after midday.
I didn’t understand and my heart was beating so loudly I could barely hear him anyway.
He said that if it had been before midday he would have told me I had a zero rating.
I still didn’t understand.
“And then I would have said, ‘April Fool’,” he said.
He gave us the top rating but my nerves were shredded.
Next year I may decide not to open on 1st April.