takeaway pizzas – Observations and Misunderstandings

After nearly five months of tears, tantrums and a few satisfied pizza lovers, the day has finally come. I can be quite a sentimental person. I enjoy ending things because more often than not it means I’m about to start something new but it doesn’t mean I don’t experience at least a pang of sadness at the letting go of something. I couple of regulars made a point of ordering tonight which was appreciated. Unfortunately I didn’t repay the compliment by being over an hour late for one and forgetting to put extra mushrooms on his pizza. I’m sure he’ll forgive me. I’ll find out at Easter if we open then. We’re probably going to be the annoying company which only bothers to open in the really busy and good times. That will drive everyone else nuts. There’s a part of me that takes pleasure in that although I’m certain I would hate it if it was the other way round. All is open though, who knows what I’ll be doing and where next Easter. I may have even finished this by then.

There have been many lesson over these five months and certainly the stress I used to experience in the early days doesn’t seem to be such a thing anymore. Stress is probably not how I would describe in entirely, of course my friends would, but I would suggest there was a bit more anger involved as that ambled about without any sense of urgency. There was definitely something of the Gordon Ramsay about me. Now I just get on with it, if I’m late I’m late and if I’m on time I’m on time. Well more or less. Also in five months, let’s be honest you just get better at things.

It seems longer than five months. We are Lockdown Pizzas because we were born in lockdown. Cheesy bastard. Early April to be precise. Time must have been going slow these last few months then. We only started making them for some fun, everywhere else was closed and we had all the ovens with the bakery. We dreamt of making a thousand pound a night minimum as people would be desperate for something tasty in lockdown. We never made that of course but we did scare all the other takeaways into re-opening. What began as a few weeks of fun became a five month old trip. It was a crash course. Thankfully not a car crash.

And now we call time. As was always going to be and as could only be. It has been emotional. It has been intense. Goodnight sweet pizzas. Good morning something else.

Drum roll please…now is the time to reveal what it was that got me all worked up the other day. Edge of your seat stuff I’m sure, it would be a surprise had you not already read the title. Yes myself and a couple of friends are selling takeaway pizzas. Let’s be honest there’s nothing like a good crisis to make a little cash. They own a bakery and as they’re still open delivering bread we thought we may as well make a few pizzas as a side project and see how it goes. It’s great though because they already understand bread so we have a really nice thin sourdough base and they have proper stone ovens so they’re stonebaked too. Genuinely they’re really nice. I’m the creative director / pizzas artist. There are no takeaways open at all in the area and people seem reasonably enthused by the prospect of being able to alleviate the tedium of this current social experiment with the idea of comfort food. On top of that we will use some of the money we manage to raise and either donate it to the NHS or if there are any local families who have been affected by the virus it would be a good thing to try and help them if possible, even just a weeks food shop. Like everything it’s a lets see how it evolves thing as clearly all is currently unknown.

But yes there was the stress. I was in a terrible fettle on Wednesday. The realisation of what we were doing all came to me at once and the intensity of the energy was just too much. I can’t remember exactly what I said in the piece on Wednesday but I think towards the end I said something about channeling the energy and even if I didn’t I have had the most remarkable two days since. Whenever I found the energy building up I detached myself from it for long enough to stop it being overwhelming, but more importantly I consciously managed to use it to focus on whatever task I needed to do. This means I have been running around like a mad man for two days but have done it in a focused controlled way which was an interesting experience for such an idle man ordinarily.

Today was ridiculous, first we found out the pizza boxes weren’t going to arrive which would make selling pizzas pretty difficult. The show must go on though so we can up with some solutions but in the end managed to buy some off a man in a van in a layby and then it turned out the vegetable order hadn’t gone through so we weren’t going to have any veggies or cheese for the pizzas. We managed to behave like toilet roll fanatics in the local co-op and emptied shelves. Ultimately both these situations would have destroyed me on Wednesday but today I managed to use the power they created for focus and drive. What a feeling. Maybe this is what people do.

Anyway I’m exhausted and I’ve got to be up in the early hours again to deliver bread tomorrow. It is simply non-stop at the moment. So as the show must go on, it may be wise to draw the curtain on this piece for today. Need to conserve my energy for another evening of pizza making after all.

Tag: takeaway pizzas

Another End For Another Beginning