Through a family connection, my eldest brother Toby has got himself involved in the cake business. He used to be an accountant and a management consultancy hotshot, and the widow of his late wife’s brother used to run a cake-baking operation. So when she also died, Toby was one of the people who rallied round to help. That was a few years ago, but the resulting enterprise, Columbine Cakes, is still very much in business. Everything depends on how the cakes are baked, and the cook, the human hinge of the whole enterprise, is still going strong.
Columbine gets most of its business from already satisfied customers who come back for more, and from those lucky people with whom those customers share their purchases, often on special occasions like weddings when only the best will do. Columbine also has a nice new website, which will supply you with all the details if you want to purchase any of their products or get onto their mailing list.
Toby gave me a Columbine fruit cake for Christmas. It wasn’t quite as good as the cakes our mother used to make at Christmas time, but it was the nearest thing to such a miracle that I’ve ever tasted, that you can buy in a shop or through the post. If this fruit cake was anything to go by, then any Columbine product – and there are now quite a few – would be worth a try. None of them are cheap. These are not cakes for the penny-pincher, or, I imagine, for the calorie-phobic. But if you give any of them a go, I truly believe you won’t regret it. Enjoy.
Now that Michael Moore is temporarily unemployed, maybe he will take an interest in working for this company. Then he could be ‘Baking for Columbine’!
If they started a line in pies and made him pastry chef would he then be “Rolling for Columbine”?
Or if they made him delivery boy and bearing in mind his likely top speed would he be “Strolling for Columbine?”
Assuming they couldn’t find better candidates of course.
What a nightmare. I’d completely forgotten what “Columbine” means to an American, i.e. to the current majority of samizdata readers. No doubt when many saw the title they were expecting some kind of sophisticated joke about guns, etc., and are still trying to puzzle it out.
It reminds me of the slimming biscuit called “Aids”.
I guess if Toby and his friends want to do any serious business in the USA they’ll have to consider a name change too.