The dawn is a good time for baking and bird watching. Not so much for running.

One week to go to the mini marathon in Dublin, I ran 3km this morning and found a new app with a 7 min workout which talks to me, issues rewards, promises new excersises “for free” if I earn two weeks in a row awards - and which pretends 10 seconds constitutes a break. I reckon if I run half the 10km next Monday, I’ll be doing fine and am really looking forward to the day out. Doing something with 10,000 other women can only be fun. 

After the bread round  this week, I not only run and cycle and prevaricate with lots of housework but I also sit down and deal with the paperwork, the dreaded VAT returns, the VAT verification check  and the even  more dreaded other tax papers. I try and keep the papers filed, desperately try and find the purse which the bread rounder last Saturday misplaced and which held all last weeks receipts. But after all that, I also try and keep the bigger picture going. Like any other business, we need to keep going, keep growing and increase that profit margin which keeps the business alive and makes my life less scary.

We do not only bake bread but we also have to keep selling it, keep our customers happy, stand out from the crowd and be noticed. To that effect we do many odd things, like selling bread to the Duchess of Cornwall which was interesting but boring and among others also an annual dawn chorus which is anything but. If you missed it, remember it for next year. Every May, we schedule to early Sundays in a row and invite our customers for a dawn chorus walk in a Kilfane woodland. Between 5 and 7am ( in the morning, yes, but it is bright – I promise) you get to walk, listen to the birds while the husband tries to explain which bird is saying what. At 7am, everyone adjournes back to the bakehouse and we have breakfast at a long table, slightly squashed but cosy and very tasty.

There is something about early mornings,  especially in the summer when the sun shines before we are finished work. Every year at the dawn chorus, or at the darkness into Light or pretty much anywhere you go where people meet early and well before their normal day starts, you hear people promising to use the days better, to not miss “this best part of the day” so often. As with most good resolutions, we are weak on follow through but the idea remains that our energies are high in the morning – even if the rest of my family disputes this fact strenuously. 

After the bread round is planning and scheming. With only 38 days left till we close for our three week summer break, the energy is already coming through. We cracked our piggy bank of extra coins from the market money box yesterday and went to Bassett’s in Thomastown for a lunch staff meeting. They have recently opened and have a wonderful place with an excellent lunch menu ( shall have to go back and check on the dinner menu soon) and ideas were plentyfull. The bake house with a difference we will stay as we develop and change – or at least talk about it. We are actively looking for more markets – and that is not in Australia, John.  So if you know one, let me know.  Actually you could do me a favour and follow this blog and send it to your friends. I promise to be reasonably interesting and sometimes entertaining. Talk to you after the run.......... walk maybe.