WEEKLY SOAP

Riverside by Glenda Young

MIKE pulled the apron over his head and tied its strings at his back. He surveyed the table in front of him, where packets and boxes of all kinds of ingredients were laid out ready to use.

There was a new recipe for him to try this time, involving a cherry cake with a mint froth, and it used some ingredients he’d never heard of before.

If this cake turned out as well as his others, it might be another one he could convince the chef, Clive, to add to the menu at the Old Engine Room.

“Ladies, could everyone gather around Mike’s table for the demonstration, please,” Vicky, the baking class tutor, said.

The women in the group huddled around Mike’s table. One of the women stood closer to Mike than he would have liked, but he was too polite to say anything.

The women were all waiting to see what delightful dessert Mike would conjure up today.

“Before we start,” Vicky began, “I want to let you know that we’ve got a reporter popping in from ‘The Ryemouth Advertiser’.

“She’s writing an article to help promote the summer classes we’re running at the community centre and said she’d like to take some pictures in the baking class today.”

A murmur of approval went up around the room.

“I wish I’d known I was going to be in the paper.” One of the women laughed. “I’d have done something nice with my hair!”

Mike smiled, then following Vicky’s instructions, he reached for the baking bowl and the cherries as his fellow students in the baking class scrutinised his every move.

“Your dad’s in the paper!” Susan cried out from the living-room sofa.

She held out her phone, which showed Mike’s picture taking up a page on the newspaper’s website.

Dave took the phone from Susan’s hands and scanned down the screen.

“He’s really enjoying baking, that’s for sure,” Dave said. “His cakes are going down a storm in the café. Clive said he can’t sell enough of the chocolate lumpy-bumpy cake that Dad makes.”

Dave handed the phone back to Susan.

“It’s a lovely picture of your dad,” she said. “He looks quite handsome.”

Dave looked at the picture.

“Well . . .” he began, squinting at the screen, “there is a certain debonair touch to him in that picture that you don’t often see in real life,” he admitted.

“It probably explains why we’re doing so well with women of a certain age in the café.” Susan smiled. “They ask to see him when they order their tea and cheesecake, you know.

“He usually comes out and has a chat with them all, passes on his baking tips, that kind of thing.”

“Really?” Dave said, surprised.

“Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed?” Susan laughed. “He’s turning out to be quite the dish of the day at the Old Engine Room.”

Dave sat quietly next to Susan, thinking. It was a while before he spoke.

“Maybe it’s time for our hidden gem to be unearthed,” he finally said, smiling at Susan. “What do you mean?” “I’ve just come up with a crazy idea to help advertise the business,” Dave explained. “It’s so mad that it just might work.”

“You’d never done any baking before you started the course, is that right?” the TV reporter asked, thrusting the microphone under Mike’s chin.

Mike shook his head and gave a wide smile into the television camera.

“None. I seem to have a knack for it now.”

“Is it true you worked here in the shipyards? Here on the same site where you now own the Old Engine Room deli and café?”

Again Mike’s face beamed into the camera.

“That’s right. In my years at the shipyards I worked in precision engineering. I think a bit of that skill has transferred its way into creating cakes now.” He laughed.

“You have a website, too, I believe?” the reporter asked, smiling at Mike. “I believe you’ve become something of an internet sensation!”

“Well . . .” Mike nodded to the camera. He could feel his cheeks burn. “I don’t know about being a sensation. My son has set it all up online for me.

“You can download videos where I demonstrate my recipes, and you can watch me baking cakes from scratch.

“From what I understand, they’ve been popular with visitors from as far away as New Zealand. With Vicky, the tutor at the community centre, we’re going to run more baking classes, too.”

The reporter turned to face the camera.

“Indeed, Mike’s baking tutor said he has a real talent, and that’s why he’s been chosen to represent Ryemouth in the Great Cake Competition which takes place in London later this month.

“Now it’s back to Sally in the studio. This is Hilary Smith, live from the Old Engine Room on the riverside for Ryemouth TV.”

More next week.