When We’re Ready We’ll Start Over by Opening a Bakeshop, by Chris Cottom
Art by James Collington
We’ll play with names. I’ll swear I’ll die on a hill for The Urban Crumb, while you’ll pledge to withhold sex until I agree to Early Bird Bakes.
Waiting for our perfect premises to ping up on Rightmove, you’ll practise your raspberry cruffins and rosemary focaccia, while I’ll clank at the gym until I can heft a hundredweight of wholemeal, lug it fifty metres, show no mercy as I knead it into an oven-load.
We’ll source aprons of unbleached cotton, fittings in stainless steel. We’ll agree on a vibe of earthmother-meets-operating-theatre, that hobo weevils won’t be welcome. When I buy a sixpack of jaunty white skullcaps, you’ll threaten to cut your Titian curls toothbrush-short, wear bonnets like a Mennonite, before plumping for bandanas in gentian blue and Kelly green.
Rising before 5:00, we’ll be glowing by 6:00, like furnacemen at Port Talbot. We’ll open early, chat with our regulars, with the lonely and the sad, bid them tarry at the table we’ll upcycle from a skip at the Mermaid and Tugboat. We’ll give seniors ten percent discount on Wednesdays, take our unsold rolls to the foodbank at St Olaf’s, marvel at hipsters driving all the way from Worcester or Chepstow for our white-chocolate babka and glazed plum galettes.
One day, someone will ask for a christening cake, or a Thomas the Tank Engine, and you’ll freeze and I’ll step forward. Except, perhaps you’ll tell me it’s fine, will lean over your notepad to busy yourself taking the details.
The customer gone, I’ll lock the door, follow you to the back, where we’ll hold one another til we’ve no tears left. Then you’ll tighten your bandana, stride through the shop to open the door, and straighten the sign that says Welcome to Conor’s.
Chris Cottom lives near Macclesfield, UK. His work features in 100 Word Story, Bending Genres, Fictive Dream, FlashFlood, Flash Frontier, Gooseberry Pie, Leon Literary Review, MoonPark Review, NFFD NZ, Oyster River Pages, Roi Fainéant, The Lascaux Review, and elsewhere. Find him at chriscottom.wixsite.com/chriscottom