cakes and baking stress....!

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I took it upon myself to present a “small” cake stall in my mother’s annual selling exhibition of her work at the beginning of November. Looking back, I had no idea how much planning this would need. I was surprised to find that my breezy attitude and casual manner of preparation had its consequences when push came to shove on the actual occasion and I fought hard to keep my stress levels to a minimum for the cause. Fortunately I managed to pull my act together and made a grand total of £182.63 over two days-not a bad start.

I love cakes, and was lucky enough to be presented with a cake book by Harry Eastwood under the unusual title of “Red Velvet and Chocolate Heartache” last year. (For anyone even faintly interested in unfamiliar ways of trying new recipes, I would highly recommend this book!) It is simply filled with cake recipes that use vegetables as ingredients, from beetroot to butternut squash and celeriac. Unpromising as it sounds it is surprising to find that biting into a “forbidden chocolate brownie” does not give one the powerful taste of beetroot. It is not only cleverly concealed within the chocolate but contains the moisture and indulgence of the cake in the most wonderfully unique and delicious way.

I “planned” my baking (or perhaps not so much so…) over a full two days’ worth of rushing around whipping out 25 orange squash cupcakes-one tray after the other from the oven whilst rustling up “pistachio chocolate cake”, “potato victoria sponge”, and “rose water fairy cakes” at the same time. It was utterly manic. I had the whole kitchen littered with cooling racks, cakes whose flavours I couldn’t remember, endless muffin trays stacked up on the sides, and always, always a fine layer of icing sugar on every available surface. It got to a point of being in the middle of concocting yet another “LA American cupcake” only to feverishly realise there was no more white rice flour- or that the lemons did not have enough zest on them to give the distinctive flavour and personality so required by Mrs Eastwood. There was nothing for it but to call on kindly neighbours to lend me some more of this or that, until I could afford to pay them back. Thank goodness I live in a village where the nearest person is 100 yards away, or I don’t know how I’d cope. It is one thing to live in the country, baking cakes and filling the house with warm smells, but another to run out of ingredients at the crucial moment. This is where my lack of planning could have gone horribly wrong.

Fortunately, when the time came I had on hand approximately 6 cakes of all flavours, more than 35 cupcakes of varying interesting ingredients and names, and a tray load of thick “forbidden brownies”. However my artistic customers did not seem hugely enticed to venture outside to the rather chilly porch where there were no frills or charms except the cakes to look at. After a rather depressing first day in which I had veered from patiently standing in the chill air by my stall to meandering in and out of the crowds tentatively asking for sponsorship, I miserably observed that I still had 6 cakes left, plus odds and ends of brownies that would soon rot if they were left uneaten. I decided I needed a different tact.

I rose bright and early on day two and set about the task of reconstructing my stall- with suggestions, guidance and advice from my family. I brought everything inside and rustled up an old table directly in front of the large ceiling to floor hall mirror, covering it in an appropriate frilly tea-cloth, laying out my wares on my mothers’ gleaming pottery plates and arranging the friendly glow of a lamp to the side. The effect was quite radical. The stall now looked as though it could have been a part of a tea-shop with the array of cupcakes shining in the soft lamplight and a large coffee cake taking centre stage on a raised stand, kindly produced by a fellow exhibitor.

All day I had people eyeing up the stall, peering down at the cakes, some raising their eyebrows kindly before hurrying away, others gushingly buying a few cupcakes for their “little ones”, or perhaps an elderly lady bagging a whole cake for her afternoon tea-time. It was an interesting learning curve. I discovered that if you want to capture people’s general interest, the best tact is to be by the stall-all the time. For someone who is naturally quite fidgety, talkative and likes to be “doing something”, this could be incredibly boring. But once I actually got someone stopping by and showing interest, it provided excellent opportunity to use my talkative mouth, promote sponsorship for the RNLI- and of course advertise the unique cakes.

Being asked “why are you raising money for the RNLI?” was an entirely different matter. Telling the story of my near drowning and skilful rescue was difficult to just thrust out into the open. But within reason, this is a big part of fundraising-feeling a passion for helping a charity that has benefitted you-and doing something about it. And ultimately my passion for helping the RNLI lifeguards is because they saved my life. The RNLI may be a very well supported charity which is why their people do their job so brilliantly-but they rely solely on that support. Without it, they would struggle with the resources to save lives as they saved mine.

By the close of the second day, I had successfully swept the table clean of goodies, plus people offering to sponsor me on my swim a mile and walking challenge. My sense of purpose in this long journey of fundraising has been lifted by my cake sale; but people supporting me in my efforts to raise money in physical challenge raises the morale even higher. Training for swimming and walking are well underway. Cakes and exercise-they CAN work together! Customers got delicious, home-made cakes, I got funds, lots of burnt (but still very edible) cakes and yet I am exercising it off, whilst out there some old dear or perhaps a cluster of children are devouring my freezer proof, unique vegetable cakes with relish. Thank-you for reading!

If you would like to read “my story”, please follow this link: http://belladenyer.blogspot.com/

If you would like to make a direct donation towards my “swim a mile” or “walk the north coast of Cornwall” challenge, please follow this link:

www.virginmoneygiving.com/ISABELLADENYER

Or alternatively you can get in touch with me directly-please comment below if you wish to do so and I will get back to you privately! All donations, support and sponsorship will go straight to the RNLI beach lifeguards. I thank you for your support.

RNLI fundraising: The beginning of a journey

As you may have noticed, the title to this blog is "RNLI fundraising: the beginning of a journey". You could say that this journey started when I was involved in a significantly life-changing accident on Polzeath beach in North Cornwal.

For about 10 years my family and I have been going to Polzeath for our summer holiday. This year, I was fortunate enough to have the company of two friends from University with me for the first half of the two weeks. Being fairly sporty people, they were keen to try their hand at a surfing lesson. It was utter hell. ‘Never again’ was my resounding thought afterwards.

Despite those famous last words; I found myself rather lonely once the friends had departed and suddenly, almost randomly decided one day to approach another lesson. I loved it. Hiring a board for a week, I was out every day upon the waves, until the last day of the holiday, when my misfortune took place.

It was a rather gloomy, grey day on the 26^th August when I asked my father if I could go before our departure from Polzeath. I was given 1 hour and then he would expect my return. Carrying my long board out into the chilly sea, facing the oncoming rain and waves that were mounting steadily, I began my accustomed paddle- lying flat upon the board and kicking out towards where the waves were beginning to break. Before I realised it, I was far away from the few other surfers, out in the deep water with nothing except my board to keep me afloat. I am not a strong swimmer and seeing this situation slightly unnerved me. However I decided it was a good opportunity to perhaps try and catch a good wave back to shore, where I could begin again, albeit more safely. Little did I know how powerful the ocean can be and how powerless one is in danger of becoming if one is a weak swimmer and inexperienced surfer.

Despite my efforts to keep my board pointing nose forward towards the shore, using both my arms and legs to plough through the onslaught of wave upon wave, I was hindered by a slow rip current that was ebbing up around me. What I did not know then about rip currents is that one should always “go with it”, rather than “through” it. The more one tries to push against it, the more the rip will catch you in its currents, so strong is the force of nature. I was becoming exhausted by the constant waves and the realisation of my inability to overcome them. I could feel myself begin to swallow water and the gritty, choking sand that had been caught up in the swirls of the waves.

I could sense a kind of darkness descending; a slow, frightening awareness that I no longer understood where top or bottom was, where light and darkness were. I was being tossed like a little leaf amongst the waves, my body becoming limp with the effort to keep afloat. One moment I saw a foamy whiteness and the next I swallowed so much water that I could no longer catch my breath-so entirely blocked were my airways. I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t see, I couldn’t call. I felt myself sinking in the water, succumbing to the darkness that completely overcame me. I did not know what had happened to me, or where the world was.

Suddenly, I felt the pull and jerk of a hand gripping me around the middle, before I was hoisted over a shoulder. I could feel myself moving, being jogged along the sand and the distant, far-away call of shouts. Without my hearing-aids, my world is silent; but never has it been more unreal or silent than it was in this moment of rescue, when I had no sense of where my world was. I felt myself being laid upon the sand and then I was swept once more into unconsciousness.

Yet again opening my eyes, I blearily saw through a haze of sand that encrusted my eye-lashes the face of a young man dressed all in red, looking anxiously down and pumping a bag slowly over my nose and mouth. I knew not what had been done, but I knew now that the urge to throw up was more wretched than any kind of sick bug in my life. I was turned onto my side as I unsuccessfully attempted to rid my lungs of the trapping water and sand that seemed to have become logged there. The sensation of being unable to breathe alone was terrifying-like having a plug in my airways. My exhaustion overcame me once again and I slipped back into the darkness.

The next memory I have is of being semi-aware of lying flat on my back in the lifeguards’ recovery room. There were lots of people there and I became very frightened. I was constantly reassured by the faces of the lifeguards there, who were aware of my hearing impairment and who did all they could to keep me calm and conscious. I still found it incredibly hard to breathe, but again they recognised my struggle and skilfully managed the task of keeping my breathing under control with the aid of bagging and constant checks to monitor my consciousness. Even at that stage of my rescue when I was so unstable, I knew that I was going to be alright. These lifeguards knew what they were doing and knew my condition. They had got me out of the water and stopped me from drowning on sea-water inhalation; they had acted quickly and skilfully to get me conscious again and had managed to get me to a place of safety, as well as calling the ambulance services within seconds of pulling me out of the water. Just knowing this information now is enough to overwhelm me with gratitude towards these people whose job it is to keep people like me alive.  I dread to think what might have happened, had they not been there or been so well trained.

Besides their skilful assessment and discussion of my condition, the lifeguards also became quickly aware that I needed to get to hospital-and quickly. It would be at least an hour in the ambulance to the Royal Cornwall Hospital in Truro, a time which for most accidents like this can be known as “the golden hour”, whereby a patient has the strongest chances of survival if they reach professional medical care within that time. From this calculation, I can safely reckon that it would have been in just under an hour that the lifeguards of Polzeath beach had got me out of the water, kept me conscious, telephoned the ambulance services and managed to get me air-lifted to hospital. That timing alone is a testimonial to the RNLI’s training and maintenance of their lifeguard team. If they did not learn those skills, or indeed maintain them through constant training and checks, people like me would not have been so lucky that day.

I finally became fully conscious of my surroundings when I awoke in the A&E department of the hospital to find a bag still being pumped over my airways and a lot of doctors and nurses attending to me. Incredibly, I was discharged from hospital later that evening-my doctors were satisfied that my lungs and airways were once more clear and free of obstruction. My father had spent at least 2 hours on Polzeath beach that morning, looking for me after he became aware that I was missing. He had seen the air ambulance go up and had not realised it was me. Fortunately he managed to find out through the surf school instructors that I had been taken ill and he was then further informed of my whereabouts by the lifeguard team, who were very helpful towards him.

This is my story of survival through the rescue of the RNLI. I do not believe that I would have got off as lightly as I did if I had not been administered to so incredibly quickly and skilfully. I take my hat off to them and they are the reason that I am embarking upon this mission of fundraising. I want to say “thankyou” to them for what they did for me; but more than that, I want to say “you saved my life”. I want them to know how much their work is appreciated and recognised and how invaluable they are to the coasts of the UK. There are too many beaches that are used by the members of the public that do not have lifeguards. If you are inspired by this story, please help me to help the RNLI by sponsoring me in my goal to raise money for the training, maintenance and recruitment of lifeguards, in the hope that those beaches may become “user friendly” places to enjoy the sea.

My events involve a “swim a mile” challenge, which I am currently undertaking swimming lessons for in recognition of my need to be strong in the water if I am to carry on my new found love of surfing without accidents!
I am also preparing to walk the coast of Cornwall next summer 2012 in a ten day target, rounding up in Polzeath where I hope to be able to hand the money over to the people who have come to mean so much to my story! Here is the link to my online sponsorship page, where you can donate and offer your contributions. Alternatively you may send me a cheque or pay directly into my bank account-if you wish to do so please ask and I will give you the details. Thankyou.


www.virginmoneygiving.com/ISABELLADENYER