At the onset of the year of the pandemic, starting on 23 March 2020, my catering business stopped! I also taught cookery at the WI Cookery School, the courses stopped and sadly, so did the physical school in September 2020, permanently. I did not know if I was going to get my catering business back up and running or was it just a sojourn until the world returned to something like normal. In December 2018, we put our house on the market, the real process starting in January 2019.
The world was crazy, and working had become a thing of the past. I spent many days debating on what I was going to do. This meant working on a website, working on a new business idea, and working on the potential house move. Lots going on and seemingly not much progress on the move. Eventually, we sold our house and found a house that we liked. Viewing the house was more difficult than it needed to be, so much so I did not actually view the house, other than online!
The seller agreed to our offer, and about a month later I could view what we had bought. Almost three weeks short of two years later, we moved into a lovely converted barn in West Wight. With a slightly unconventional arrangement, the bedrooms and bathroom off a central lounge upstairs and the kitchen/diner with a utility room etc. downstairs. A quirky property with the great bonus of being near the sea, a four-minute walk away. The move took place in December and we have been settling in for nearly six months now.
Business-wise nothing has really changed. I am planning an online cookery school using the kitchen here in the house as my studio. With an Aga and a dual gas hob/electric oven, I have the kitchen I need. I have also started working on the courses I developed over the years and will in time repurpose them as a series of ebooks so that you can do the course at home. I plan to teach the courses in smaller recorded sessions and live sessions online from my website. I am currently developing the website.
Just this weekend I recorded a recipe session for a charity that works with a team of students at Bournemouth University. They asked if I could do a twenty-minute session as part of a day of events for the charity, supporting children who are suffering from cancer. I set up the studio in the kitchen and recorded the recipe from start to finish.
The recipe was my version of Chocolate Cornflakes with a Golden sugar dust sprinkle. I will put the video on my website the day after the event which will be on Facebook on Saturday the 15th of May.
This was an excellent exercise for me to learn how best to set up the cameras, the kitchen, lighting and so on. It was a busy day but worth the learning curve and experience.
I also created the logo for my new cookery school. I wanted it to represent the location and be as simple as possible. I am using my website paulbellchambers.com to host the school and the courses. It seemed a simpler way to go just now. Hopefully, the school can move to its own website in the future. So far so good and progress is happening. I have covers for ten ebooks, ten courses that I designed, developed and taught. I have more, and I was surprised at how many I had created over a seven-year period. The process of breaking them down into smaller session for online teaching is still to be done.
I am feeling positive about how things are progressing and this is alongside all of the work on the new house and other projects that are ongoing.
I look forward to sharing lots more about the cookery school as it develops.
Thanks,
Paul
You've come a long way from your IT days Paul. Best wishes and good fortune for the new venture. Eddie