Let me start my story by saying this, I love baking. And no, this isn’t just in a ‘I love it as a hobby and as a great conversation starter during nights out’ kind of love. When I say I love baking, I mean it in the deepest and most heartfelt sense of the word. I truly love baking. My mum’s a part-time chef at a local restaurant and cooked in some competitions back in her heyday. Her mum owned a restaurant back when the family was in Glasgow. And Granddad was an actual baker. So yeah, you can say that the culinary arts have been in the family for quite some time. I was the picture-perfect fourth-generation cook from back when I was a kid. I grew up surrounded by baking and cooking and flipping and frying. I used to be the kid that always went home during break, not because I missed my parents (though I did), but also because I missed the feeling of making gastronomic masterpieces at my mum’s kitchen. From cakes to cookies, I could outbake (or think I could outbake) anyone!
And then along came graduation.
Yes, most of my classmates chose to still live with their parents (and some still live with their parents, horrifying though it may be!), but I had an independent streak in me that just couldn’t stomach the thought of being stuck in the same little town I grew up in. So, like a bad movie plot, the little baker girl struck out on her own for the city. Well, not exactly on my own. Mum pulled some strings and had Kate, her friend’s daughter’s cousin or something, get me as a flatmate. Now the flat itself was pretty affordable and cozy enough, but there was one thing that was missing: a good kitchen. I mean, it had a kitchen, but I couldn’t even bear to look at it for that long. Appliances were missing, shelves were nonexistent, and there was not enough space to make it my own.
As much as I tried to convince her, Kate refused to split the bill for renovating the kitchen area. And this was after I slaved for months doing part-time retail. I wasn’t willing to waste a year away without being able to bake. It made my skin itch like crazy! So it was either out of sympathy or just plain frustration that Kate recommended that I apply for a guarantor loan. A bit of wheedling and begging got Mum to affix the necessary signatures, and my wish was finally granted. You see those dream kitchens on Pinterest and Tumblr? Yeah, that’s what my kitchen looks like now. Marble countertops, light streaming in from French windows, countless sets of immaculate white china. I even got the silverware to match! Who knows? I might even start baking as a sideline. All with a quick and painless process of getting a guarantor loan.
