What can you say? This is Osian 18 years old, ‘A’ Levels coming up and about to take on the world. Ran a bread course for him last weekend.
What stops you in your tracks (and makes you feel very old) is that he can remember coming with his parents to collect bread and having to reach up to get a mini baguette for himself from a bunch clustered in a pint pot on the living room table. Must have been all of six at the time. Looking on the bright side, at that point I was about 10 times older than him and now I’m only 4 times his age.
He came to my 65th birthday party in 2012 at Bethesda Rugby Club (when I “retired”), still young enough to dance with a balloon stuffed up an anorak hood:
If you think the photo’s fuzzy you should have seen the photographer after several hours on the Guinness:
Osian had to remind me that he has yet more bread history. In 2011, when he must have been about 9, he was at the 5th annual Bethesdabakin’ weekend with his father, Glenn. He remembers it well because he went flying with a big bowl of flour he was taking to his Dad …
Anyway, no disasters last weekend. Far from it:
Good course, great bread.
AND: one other thing that really cheered me up was the fact that the course was paid for through barter. This was Osian’s Christmas present and Glenn traded a goose, two big chunks of pork (I mean about 7K), a bag of fabulous lardons and paid the rest in cash. The geese and pigs were raised by the family.
The PArtisan Baker 