Arriving early, at my very first writing group (attending let alone leading), I settled into a lovely cappuccino and didn't care that it was after four. The first task I have set for everyone (or at least will when someone turns up) is to look around, try to notice something then write for three to five minutes in a stream of consciousness. The goal here is to simply get something on the page and to remove the pressure of a blank page.
Five minute exercise
Three people are sitting quite close to my cappuccino and talking a little louder that is really necessary. It sounds like a politico business meeting and perhaps not the kind of chat that should be exposed to eavesdropping.
The scone - Are our self imposed bubbles soundproofed? Have we lost the awareness of our volume during lockdown? Or have I become hypersensitive to other people and their conversations after such a long isolation?
What does a scone say about you? When you venture from a corporate setting into a social one, what do you learn about your colleagues? What do they learn about you? The conversation might slip into the personal; platitudes are replaced by perceived, genuine interest. But is that all? Is it a safe environment to learn about your workmates? Or is it an area for their judgement?
So, back to the scone. Scones are great; they are easy to make, tasty but they are the spaghetti bolognese of the cake world. They crumble, they clog in your mouth and if you've not got scalding tea to free you from a muffled gobbledegook, is there a way to save face when responding to your boss?
So, if scones are rife with danger, what cake is a power cake? What shows ambition, passion but also screams team player?
This is as far as I got when Rebecca arrived but I assure you, this is not the end of the power cake...it has been much on my mind.
Main task - The cake lady
Janice liked cakes. She didn't really eat them and but that didn't stop her making a lot of them for other people. In fact the only time that she did eat them was when it was someone else's birthday and she was offered a slice of the cake that she herself had actually made. She felt that it would be bad for business to be seen refusing her own handiwork.
Janice had long ago lost her sense of smell, decades of icing sugar going up her nostrils had shredded any olfactory senses she had. Like a coke addict, she joked once too often and was stared at at a 10 year old's birthday party.
Janice like fondant; pinks and purples, lilac and mulberry. She could mould roses, daisies, tulips and forget-me-nots. She had steady hands and could write with a calligraphers precision using a tiny piping bag and icing of just the right thickness to flow but also hold its shape.
At the Fruitmarket Gallery she surveyed the art briefly. Large colour panels reminded her of her garden; bleached out green in summer and muddy brown in winter.
Upstairs she was intrigued to find even more to excite her. A huge peach panel with grooves and striations showing a structure of mesh. Textured and flecked with blues and even black. It was modern, rough but would be easy to recreate.
"What do you think?" A fellow onlooker asked her.
"Yes; it's like an enormous cake collar."
The lady smiled and directed her to the next gallery. Janice was not disappointed; a white, powder puff cloud of swirls, stitches, buttons and what looked like dolly mixtures faced a turquoise blue topper of glitter and, she couldn't believe her eyes, sugar nibs.
Thoughts
So, clearly I got hung up on cakes at the Fruitmarket Gallery. I think I struggled to "get" the exhibition and so the lingering sugar cravings and obsession with defining "the power cake" clearly spilled over into my writing session. I'm still searching for the power cake and how it should be deployed...probably more to come on that front; most sessions start and end in the cafe after all!
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