Eating Grits in the Deep South
There’s a frog living in my bathroom. She’s been there for a few months now. I often wonder what she thinks of me rushing in, running water, brushing my teeth hours before the sun has come up, rushing in again way after dark. I wonder what she does in the house all day whilst I’m gone.
I wonder if she thinks I’m rather strange. She lives a peaceful life from what I can tell. She sits in the lilly plant. Occasionally she moves to the shower shelf. Life is simple. She’s just being a frog.
I, on the other hand, don’t keep things simple.
The last few weeks have been a whirlwind. I’m all about jumping and assembling a parachute on the way down. In fact, I believe this is the only way. If I waited until everything was in place before I did anything, this studio would not exist. Jump first. Then there’s no choice but to make it work.
I’m used to living like this but I’ve had more doubts than usual. Turns out owning a cafe is actually pretty hard haha who knew! It makes running a yoga studio look like a walk in the park.
Yoga studio - turn up, teach, leave. Blow the candles out.
Cafe - ordering all the food, how much to order, sourcing a coffee machine, oh they’re a million dollars, hiring staff, scheduling rosters, setting up a docket system (what’s a docket system), ordering all the drinks, keeping things cold, not poisoning people, insurances, food handling, how many coffee beans do we need, will it be busy or quiet, what do we do with food left over, organising all the furniture, oh people want to sit on chairs??, cutlery, plates, napkins, oh people use napkins?? Light the fire. Source firewood, prep everything, wash the dishes, mop the floors, cleaning stuff, oh you have to clean? Set up a business name, design a website, use a booking system, rent out all the treatment rooms, create a million systems when you cant cope with systems, collapse into a pile on the floor.
When Ness and I floated the idea a few months ago I got A LOT of friendly warnings from people basically saying dont do it. BUT. It feels right. Crazy but right. So here we are. Thankfully I’m not doing it alone. I have help in the form of two angels, my new business partners Ness & Charlie. Working in partnership is also a completely new thing for me. It’s different and wonderful and comforting and terrifying and beautiful all at the same time.
We had our soft opening this Saturday which I will say was a huge success. Thank you to everyone who’s supporting this vision. I see all of you and your efforts do not ever go unnoticed. Our coffee machine has arrived today and we are opening this Saturday with a full menu! Think nourishing bowls of hot soups and stews next to the fire, the best coffee from Alfresco with the most amazing baristas, live music every single weekend and art workshops out the back. The cafe will be open every day, 365 days a year (yep even Christmas Day for orphans Christmas!).
So thats that.
On another note, this winter is not messing around. The beach was another world this morning, the sea mist so thick I couldn’t see my hands in front of my face. The world turned to smoke and I sat in the stillness, tears of gratitude streaming down my face for this opportunity I have to be here. To be alive. To be sitting on this sacred earth. The last two winters in Broulee have been deceptively mild and the hot summers always make me forget. I walked for a while through this white world, picking up plastic washed in from the huge tides, the pale sun was a long way from breaking through the dense fog. My fingers started to hurt. I wondered when did I get so sensitive to the cold.
The coldest I’ve ever been was travelling through mid USA in December in a van that cost $800 and windows didn’t close.
After crashing my car into a kangaroo I found myself living in Woolgoolga with Jimmy, who was working gruelling chef hours and his stoner housemates who smoked bongs and left pasta burning on the stove every night. I tried to make myself useful. Everyone told me there were no jobs. Every single day I went out with my resume and walked around the town, applying at every restaurant, cafe, pub, shop. As I said, the place was tiny so it didn’t take long. The rest of the time I’d spend my days walking the beaches and headlands. Sometimes I’d walk so far I’d end up in the next town and would call Jimmy to come pick me up on his lunch break. It reminded me of home.
As soon as I was old enough to adventure by myself I’d jump on my bike and ride, and keep riding until I was totally lost. I’d regularly call my Mum from local phone boxe. Where are you she’d ask. ‘No idea’ 10 year old me would answer. ‘What does it say on the phone box?’ she’d ask, ever practical. ‘Oh, ok you’re 60 miles away. Great. Why didn’t you turn around and come back before you got lost?’. I couldn’t really answer but remember thinking, if you’re going forward, why would you turn back.
My persistence paid off, if you’d call it that. I landed a primo job in the fishmongers. I’ll never forget the smell that seeped into my skin, my hair, my soul. I’d come home at night and stand in the boiling shower for an eternity and still wouldn’t feel clean. My job involved serving the customers, filleting the fish and cleaning slimy guts off the floors whilst listening to the complaints of the owner which were many and spewed out in a sepia monologue of woe.
I think I lasted a week before the Gods started to smile on me once again. I saw a job in the paper for a barista and cafe manager for the Jetty Theatre in Coffs Harbour. It was a council job so payed really well. I’d never made a coffee in my life, but I didn’t think that mattered. I applied anyway and said, yes, of course I can make coffee. I mean, I liked to drink it and how hard could it be?
I arrived for the interview, probably still smelling of fish, in my nicest clothes and red lipstick.
‘Welcome! OK, first things first. Make me a coffee. Flat white. Strong. Cows milk.’
The manager who I want to call Dave, pointed me to the machine. Shit. I had no idea where to start.
‘Ummmm. I smiled. The coffee machines in England are different I said, putting on my poshest English voice.’ He looked at me for a moment, skeptical, then amused and said ‘it’s ok, i’ll teach you.’ Maybe he admired my tenacity and enthusiasm. Maybe he was desperate to hire someone, who knows, but I got the job, even though the coffee tasted terrible.
I’d gone from fishmongers assistant to (slightly) glamorous theatre cafe manager in 24 hours. I was thrilled about my ascent. For the most part I loved my new job. I got to watch some of the shows and serve champagne and chat to all the theatre guests. Part of my role was promoting the shows via social media and writing about upcoming events. I’d never done any of this before, but as always, nodded and said yes I could do it and then just made it up along the way.
After working at the theatre for a couple of months, the marketing manager left. ‘Clare! You seem to know what you’re doing with the events. Have you had much marketing experience? I’m wondering if you’d like this role?’
I nodded and smiled and said, yes of course I’m up for the job. That night I read through the job description with dread. I didn’t understand any of it. BUT. What did I have to lose. I started the next day and sat in the office and pretended to know what I was doing. I was way out of my depth and I knew it.
Luckily Jimmy and I had flights booked to America in a few weeks, so I did enough to be semi -useful then broke the news that I was leaving. Part of me was sad. I’d really landed on my feet and started to love my time on the mid north coast, but adventures were calling.
A few days later we landed in LA. I was amazed at how we’d gone back in time. ‘I’m a day younger’ I cried to anyone who would listen, because at the time I was terrified of turning 30 which is possibly the stupidest thing I’ve ever thought.
From LA we flew straight to Florida and partied for few weeks at the creatively named FEST. A punk rock festival that takes over the town of Gainesville every year. Moshpits,PBR cans, Four Locos and the most hungover times of my life. I was starting to reach my partying limit. It was taking longer and longer to recover. Along with all the incredible times, I remember the most miserable days feeling so nauseous I could hardly move. Somehow I used to think it was worth it, because the next morning I’d start drinking and do it all over again.
When the festival had finished we had options. Go back to Australia. OR. Buy a van and travel round America. It was a no brainer. How hard can it be? I said. Turns out, it’s almost impossible to buy a vehicle in America without a social security number. The only way you can get a social security number is if you’re a citizen. Somehow, by the grace of God, after driving around Florida in a rental car for what seemed like an eternity, we found a tiny little registry place that would do it for us. They told us not to ask any questions, hand over the green dollar bills and that was it. We had Florida plates!
The first van we bought for $3000 US, which was the majority of our credit card maxed out budget. We were ridiculously un-prepared. Even by my standards. We had this vague idea we’d do the van up, put a bed in the back, that kind of thing, but we weren’t about to wait for that. I’ll never forget that first night. We bought sleeping bags and a silver ‘emergency’ blanket from Walmart and drove into the pine forest to sleep. The temperate dropped about 30 degrees over night.
We were sleeping on the metal floor of a van. We didn’t even have a mattress. In the middle of the night we had the first of many interactions with the police. A bemused Florida cop knocked on our door at 3am to find two long haired, smelly twentiesomethings huddled up under a $2 emergency blanket. He couldn’t understand A) how we’d got this van licensed in the first place, B) what the F we were doing. As far as I can remember he was pretty nice and didn’t fine us, but told us to drive off before we froze to death.
As we defrosted in the nearest Waffle House drinking bitter black coffee by the gallon, Jimmy inhaling mounds of pancakes covered in syrup & bacon; me picking at a bowl of ‘grits’, this porridge type thing which was the only thing I could I find that wasn’t a million calories because at that time I wanted to stay thin. I had absolutely no issue with taking all the drugs and drinking all the drinks but when it came to food I was always trying to eat healthy which I guess is a worthwhile cause but totally pointless when road-tripping the Deep South.
The waitresses would come over, always fascinated by our accents. ‘wait a minute - y’all from Australia, and y’all from England?? Hey Johnny get over here!!’ Sometimes they’d wake up their kids in the back to hear us say ‘tomato’ & ‘bottle’. When I said my name they always thought I was saying Clam. In the end I just went with it. Yep, my name is Clam. The most common question was ‘what in God’s name are you doing in little old Otter Creek??’ We’d smile and admit we didn’t really know. They’d take one look at me and my grits and pull a face ‘girl you wasting away, you need to eat, get some meat on them bones.’
That day, less than 24 hours after we forked out our entire trip fund, the engine in our new van blew up. We’d been sold a lemon. Dejected but not defeated we sat at the greyhound bus station looking at the map. Jimmy knew a friend of a friend in Tampa so we decided to head there and stay in a hostel, maybe work some cash jobs and look for a new van. The end of that chapter and a million other long stories was finding our beloved van Lola for only $800. She didn’t look like much. She had no heating and only the drivers door would open so you had to climb into the passenger and back from there, but in America, if it’s got an engine its road worthy. We’d learnt our lesson and had her checked out by a mechanic who was working in the hostel who really saved our life in so many ways. That was the beginning of over 20,000 miles of adventures and maybe 20,000 more newsletters.
The moral of the story. Jump and assemble the parachute on the way down, or risk standing at the edge forever. If it doesn't work out, it doesn't matter because in this reality you dont crash to Earth, there's just another edge! Very apt for this Sagittarius full moon, gracing our skies as I type.
Thank you for reading. I love you.