pumpkinstrokemarrow

Over the last few days there has been still more shopping, in the form of a cake hunt. The hunt centred in Epsom. Started off with the High Street caffs, at least two of which looked as if they would sell one a basic cake. Didn't make any enquiries though; in these small places it is too easy to be sucked in too fast once one makes a start. Failure in negotiating style which also manifests itself in car boot sales. Sprog 1 much better than me at this sort of thing. Next stop a shop called 'Cook' which did a modest range of frozen cakes and deserts at modest prices. A gang called http://www.cookfood.net/ with whom I had had no previous acquaintance. Middle aged shop assistant all done up in a blue apron as if he was the cook. Not particularly keen on the frozen option; it might work fine but it does not have the right savour about it. Not exactly just like Auntie Flo's efforts. Then onto Marks & Spencer. A modest range of fresh, another of boxed and another of frozen. There were things here which would do, but nothing very sparkly. No froth. A bit dull with too much of that heavy white icing they tend to put on wedding cakes. Then onto Waitrose, which I had been expecting to be the best of the bunch. But actually slightly inferior to Marks & Spencer. So ended the first round, somewhat wiser, without cake but with two kippers. Waitrose can do kippers.

On the second day, thought it was an ideal opportunity to sample the shiny new Mr S., previously mentioned but not sampled. I thought that this huge newly refurbished shop would have a substantial bakery department. But disappointed. There was indeed a substantial bakery department but the impression given was that it was devoted to their basics range. Certainly not up to Marks & Spencer. Second round, still without cake.

On the third day, thought of Patisserie Valerie, of which we have a branch in Kingston. Not a bad outfit to my mind, for a chain, despite their Soho outlet being a bit cramped upstairs. Maybe, like so many of these chains, they are trying to grow too fast and what was a good idea will go belly up. Lose grip on quality as the operation gets too big for the founders to keep a personal eye on. Have to rely on procedure manuals like the rest of us. Be that as it may, for the moment they are doing all right, so off to their web site. Where I find that they do indeed do a good range of frothy cakes. Order today, collect tomorrow. Just the ticket, maybe twice the price size for size than the other places. Cunning touch in that the cakes are all more or less the same price size for size, so you can chose the one you like without having to worry whether this one is dearer than that one. So, third round, still without cake, but cake more or less chosen. My betting is that we will go with this option. Probably not a good plan to collect the thing on the bicycle, tempting though that is. Just about ready for the 20 mile round trip now. No big hills.

Closed the day by leafing through my second hand copy of the annual abstract of statistics for 2007. New price £49.50. Price to me as new £1.50, ex Epsom Library. Came across a table about the balance of payments, table 19.10. I find that the absolute value of the balance has grown steadily from a small number of hundreds of millions a year in the 1950's to tens of thousands of millions a year in the 2000's. For some years, the balance was actually positive, presumably the oil years. But now the number is strongly negative, getting more negative and running at -£50,000,000,000, say £1,000 for each man, woman and child. On a GDP of around +£1,000,000,000,000. Which says to me that we are consuming about 5% more than we are growing. Clearly unsustainable in the long run. When will the bubble burst? Option 2, I have read the thing all wrong. Not the easiest read late at night.