#like it’s so expensive for teams even to pay to compete so it’s nowhere near a level playing field

[worldchampionpeccobagnaia]

Hi! This is really random but may I know why you don't like Domi? I mean on the rare occasion I watch motoE I don't really vibe with him but I just thought it's because I prefer Eric. Is there any specific reason why?

other than being a massive creep he’s done some pretty unsportsmanlike things during races. at the 2021 motoe finale he and jordi torres were fighting for the championship and he pulled a dodgy move that took jordi out, meaning domi won the championship but he ended up getting a time penalty that was the equivalent of a ride through which meant he lost the championship, then he went on social media and effectively declared himself the moral and true champion (which is bullshit anyways and if he’d not been so desperate he might even have won it fair and square) and then this season in wssp he was involved in a crash, that he didn’t cause he was just collateral damage, and basically faked a concussion to try and get a red flag brought out so he could restart the race, he admitted to doing this the next day and got banned from taking part in race 2 because of it ! finally, and this is just personally, but his fan club just weird me out they’re like a cult almost and apparently only something like ~200 people are allowed to join it’s all very weird and :/

[emblem-333]

Let’s Save The Hitman

In my eyes wrestling is corny, formulaic, and whenever someone tries something creative for the sake of change it is immediately the worst. There’s a fine line between PG and PG-13 the WWE walks today. In some ways for the better. The women, while often forgotten, aren’t treated primarily as sex objects. Wrestlers of various ethnicities are treated better, at least in their on-screen portrayal. The Attitude Era content fans yearn to return never will. No matter the platform WWE finds itself on they want to appeal to children to obtain mainstream credibility they enjoyed for a very brief time in the Hulk Hogan-era, and in 2000. You can gauge how in-vogue wrestling is with the casual audience with if one of them hosts Saturday Night Live.

As of today, the WWE doesn’t know what it wants to be. Every year they beg celebrities to show their faces for WrestleMania for that mainstream appeal. They are also grooming Shane McMahon to be the edgy, son of a billionaire heel to fill his father’s shoes from The Attitude Era. Women are challenging man’s masculinity on live television on Raw, then on Smackdown the champion is hugging little children on the way to the ring. C.M Punk is right when he describes wrestling as the most “bipolar” industry.

In 1997 the WWE appealed solely to the crowd who wanted the edgier product. The rejection of the clean-cut Babyface Bret Hart and his stereotypical tendencies, despite his superior in-ring and fine promo skills, the days of the black and white were long over. In ‘97 World Championship Wrestling simply was kicking WWF’s ass. The New World Order was setting the landscape on fire. Heel Hogan rejuvenated his career. It didn’t even matter the wrestling matches featuring the nWo were subpar. The characters were just that great. Meanwhile, the WWF in late in the year knew what had to be done, only they lacked the funds to do it. It wasn’t enough to give the red hot “Stone Cold” Steve Austin the title. Vince McMahon needed more juice in the building for the occasion. He set his eyes for heavyweight champion Mike Tyson. His expensive price tag was paid after McMahon ran Bret out of the WWF into the arms of WCW. WHAT A COINCIDENCE!

The first hurdle McMahon had to conquer wasn’t simply getting the belt off Bret. It was the squeeze a pay day out of the illustrious Shawn Michaels/Bret Hart rivalry before The Hitman walked out the door. The two have worked in singles matches only twice prior. The first time at Survivor Series, 1992, and the famous Iron-Man Match at WrestleMania XII. Each match a four-in-a-half star affair. The two were penciled to have a rubber-match for WrestleMania XIII. Except the champion Michaels “Lost his smile”.

Translation: “I’m the champion. I don’t have to do jobs for anybody. Also, my knee hurts.”

As you can imagine, this caused a rift between The Heartbreak Kid and The Hitman. Prior to Survivor Series, in 1997, all Hart asked McMahon was he’d end his WWF career with his dignity. McMahon insisting he drop the championship to Michaels. Hart won the title from The Undertaker at Summerslam earlier in the year.

The infamous Montreal Screwjob ruined the life of one of the greatest performers the business had ever seen. While simultaneously catapulting the cutthroat McMahon above his competitors to the point he currently holds a monopoly on the wrestling industry. (We’ll see how All Elite Wrestling does)

So what-if a compromise was reached? Or if the whole scene was avoided all together? Obviously the Monday Night War continues into the 21st century. Even as WCW decayed under the inmates running the asylum (*coughs Hulk Hogan*) if the company never felt the need to try anything different after losing their lead in the ratings maybe the company is still around today? With no “Mr. McMahon” character to act as a foil for the anti-Hero Austin how much of what made Stone Cold so great is missed?

How do we arrive at such an occurrence? Simple. Have The Undertaker go over Bret Hart at Summerslam. Referee Michaels catches Bret using a chair on Undertaker and disqualifies him. The stipulation for this match was if Hart were to lose he would no longer compete on American soil. This is earth shattering to the WWF world in 1997 if Hart had to adhere to this stipulation. Hard to imagine this not being an appropriate end for Hart’s WWF career if his heel run comes to a screeching halt at the hands of his arch nemesis. The Madison Square Garden crowd goes bonkers obviously buying the now anti-American Hart.

With no Monday Night Raw scheduled for Canada we probably never see Hart wrestle for the WWF again. Fun fact: his contract was expired by the time Survivor Series rolled around. He didn’t have to work the show. Being the champion at the time he felt obliged. If we do arrive at Survivor Series in Montreal with Hart and Michaels main eventing HBK is the one with the belt. You need this match to have the belt at stake. Is the sting of Montreal still momentous if Hart is screwed out of the title he did not have? I have no clue. It’s awfully hard to believe Hart refusing to do the job if Michaels was already champion at Survivor Series. The circumstances would be different. Michaels could retain via D.Q. McMahon wouldn’t be so hellbent on destroying Hart’s reputation Canada. Perhaps a more dignified exit means no racist angle involving the D-Generation X vs The Hart Foundation vs The Nation of Domination? People forget how clumsy and nonsensical the early stages of The Attitude Era was. HBK and Triple H frequently would crack unfunny, immature jokes. They would blabber on and on and find themselves miles away from the initial subject matter.

Hopefully, in this universe, Undertaker retaining washes all of that away. As for Undertaker, Michaels probably gets the belt at either of the In Your House PPVs prior to Survivor Series. ‘Taker’s younger brother Kane was scheduled to debut at Badd Blood. So his appearance can cause ‘Taker to lose the belt to Michaels and transition both participants to the next story.

Scenario Number 2: The Patriot Defeats Bret at IYH: Ground Zero

Hey! Remember The Patriot? Of course you don’t! Nobody does. But for a brief time (oh, so brief) Del Wilkes was red hot debuting in the WWF after stints in Japan and WCW, popping in just as Bret got one over on Michaels and won the belt from ‘Taker at Summerslam. The Patriot didn’t take too kindly to Hart’s defaming America and challenged him to match on July 14th edition of Raw is War. With a little help from The Showstoppa' Patriot scores a monumental upset win over Hart. Sgt. Slaughter acting as commissioner later ordered The Hitman to defend his recently won title against the Patriot at Ground Zero: In Your House.

Funny side-note: this is the feud that turned Vader face. While Vader and Hart were slugging it out for the title on Raw the Hart Foundation attacked Vader, The Patriot ran out to make the save. The next week The Patriot found himself triple-teamed by Bret, Owen and the British Bulldog where Vader repaid the favor by saving Patriots’ bacon.

Del Wilkes was an average wrestler. He spoke in a slow southern accent, lacked charisma and his backstory never was a mystery despite wearing a mask. His gimmick didn’t make much. Why was he wearing a mask if he was a Lucha Libra? The video package prior to the match tells us who The Patriot is. Informing us he played offensive tackle for the South Carolina Gamecocks with Heisman Trophy winner running back George Rogers.

Watching the match I’m convinced Bret could make me look like a thousand dollars because he made The Patriot look like a million. While the crowd chanted “Austin! Austin! Austin!”, I found myself engrossed. Even though I was well aware of the outcome, with each near-fall I wondered if the upset was possible.

I’m sure Wilkes was a hard worker, but he was not championship material. That all being said, if there was ever a night to crown a Cinderella it was right then and there. Even if it was for ONE NIGHT no matter the aftermath the WWE today could have benefited from an out of nowhere challenger turn champion back when their belts meant something.

In his promos after conquering Michaels, and ‘Taker, Hart still is nagging about how the American fans don’t appreciate him. It’s so bizarre. He is on top of the world and can’t transition from complaining to gloating self-righteousness. I don’t fault Hart for this. Creative just saw him as a whiny heel. But then why give him the belt if you were only going to write him a certain way?

You can have Hart win the title back on Raw (even on the night after Ground Zero), or turn Vader heel and take advantage of a weakened, naive Patriot. Be nice to see what Vader could have done with the WWF World Championship around his waist.

To close out this scenario, I searched for Wilkes on Twitter. He is unverified. Also, he’s a MAGA chud. What is it with wrestlers having terrible political beliefs???

Scenario 3: Owen Hart defeated Shawn Michaels to face Bret at WrestleMania XII

We never really did get that Bret vs Owen rubber-match. The two put on absolute clinics to open WrestleMania X in 1994, and a couple months later at Summerslam. Owen winning the first in an upset over his brother. Bret won the steel cage rematch for the world title. It was Owen’s only world title match. The little brother would never rise outside of the mid-card for the rest of his career. It’s unfair for a great many reasons. Owen was the most technically sound wrestler - even more than Bret. Arguably, Owen was superior on promos because there’s more depth in his heel persona than Bret’s portrayal as a face. After his victory at ‘Mania Owen delivered a stuttering, delusional promo. Owen simply didn’t know how to handle the success overcoming his big brother, feeling he’s finally escaped The Hitman’s shadow — only for Bret to win the world title hours later over Yokozuna.

In 1996 in the run-up to WrestleMania XII the red hot Shawn Michaels recently turned face and was gearing up to take the torch from Bret, having won his second straight Royal Rumble; in his first win, he did it coming in at number one. But Owen earned the right to challenge Michaels’ #1 contender status at In Your House: Rage In The Cage. The two put on an absolute show ending in HBK solidifying his status as the one to challenge Bret at ‘Mania. HBK would go on to win the strap, Bret would go on to dip his toes in acting.

But what-If Owen beat HBK? What-if his manager Jim Cornette waffled Michaels with his tennis racket while the referee was distracted and Owen got the cheap pin?

Well, for starters: it will be the first year where the Royal Rumble winner wouldn’t have gone on to challenge for the title at ‘Mania. A scheme McMahon didn’t concoct until the Rumble Rey Mysterio won in the prelude of WrestleMania XXII a decade later.

Owen relinquishes his brother of the strap, as Bret would not have any qualms doing the honors for his brother like he did in their first matchup since he was already leaving. This wipes away Michaels losing his smile, and Owen nearly killing Austin at Summerslam ‘97.

Owen and Bret meet for WrestleMania XIII, so no iconic submission match for Austin (we’re just cutting off Stone Cold’s legs right now). Austin probably finds himself challenging the white-meat Babyface Rocky Maivia for the I.C title. He probably does the job for Rocky. No feud with Bret means no heat for Austin.

If either of these scenarios became reality we’re watching WCW right now. There’s no way without sacrificing Hart the WWF could have overcome the Atlanta base promotion. At the end of the day, the bad guy did win. It’s a damn shame. But that’s the real world.

[dmitrilyalikov]

Why do America’s generations keep getting dumber?

America is the global symbol of individual liberty and opportunity. Defined by capitalism and democracy, the very concepts that have made the U.S. the hallmark in innovative thinking and societal development. With arguably the best ‘system’ in the world able to work at great scale, American renegades have been the frontrunners in many aspects of society many countries wish they could compete with. Walt Disney, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, all American icons for creative thinking and execution. Creative, intelligent men that any company would love to have on their team if they could convince them to come. They’ve accomplished things that some would believe to be impossible, and not only that, they all dropped out of college. The education system failed them. 

The current American educational system was first introduced in the 1910′s during the industrial era to create a scaled up version of a youth knowledge assembly line. Children are crammed into large classrooms and are taught general knowledge to enter the next level of education. The strict regimen of be quiet, listen, and regurgitate what you have heard onto a standardized exam to get a letter grade has been used for over a century. This practice is nowhere near teaching a child to think and solve problems. Tests do not work. They do not represent any more than words on a paper. Example, the Chinese Box Experiment. In short, a Chinese professor inserts a test of different Mandarin characters that a robot on the other side of the door must answer. The robot identified every character correctly and returned the paper. The Professor says “Wow, this pupil understands Mandarin very well!”. She is unaware the answers came from a machine programmed by humans. The robot does not actually understand what is going on, it is simply responding with what it’s been told to do. Understanding is using memory to create predictions. However, this is exactly how school teaches children in America. They program children to respond to an input with a correct output, and those that compute such information correctly, are deemed the brightest. If we are programming children to act as robots, robots will win every time, bar none. The only way to fundamentally beat a robot is to be more human. Humans have creativity, emotional intelligence, morals, historical and societal awareness. Schools are essentially building kids like robots in an assembly line. They are writing code in our brains on how to think, act, and behave in many situations. The smartest natural child can be nurtured in such an environment to become average. 

The most beautiful aspect of a child is its sense of curiosity and creativity. Left to its own, many will fantasize about spaceships and rockets and trains. They will dance on couches, spill their parent’s coffee on the rug, They ask naive questions about complex issues. I was lucky enough as a child as my father would make me understand how any toy or tool worked when I used it. I was made to inquire about the world around me. How does a car engine work? What could make it better? Why do planes not fall from the sky? I was then sent to day school and would be told to shut up and listen to the teacher, because he is smarter than you. What does it mean to be smart then? To know more information and algorithms downloaded into the hippocampus? Memory is not intelligence. Intelligence and consciousness are manifested in the neocortex. The part of the brain that operates high level thought. Children in American society are suppressed and told to remember things to graduate. After a certain point of indoctrinated thinking, children lose their sense of curiosity and are more focused on execution then the process of learning and solving the problem itself. The most commonly asked question in American schools is “Will this be on the test next week?”.

So how can we make this better? This epidemic starts on the very system of education itself. The end goal of school is to obtain a degree, a rough representation of what college taught you, or maybe you were just wily enough to cheat (which is highly incentivized in the ends justify the means environment.). School’s are not obligated to innovate. Colleges are businesses. They force 18 year old children to take on 200 thousand dollar debt decisions. They don't need all that money. The books that cost hundreds of dollars for students, cost 6$ to make. NO INDUSTRY IN THE WORLD HAS A MONOPOLY THAT BOASTS SUCH GREAT PROFIT MARGINS. Colleges have young generations on a string with the rhetoric that a degree is worth such money. Millions of kids cry joyfully over getting into a school, just to give them money that is taken from loans to enslave them once they get out with a degree. College is enslavement. It is a monopolistic business. It is a shame to see such an important factor to human development being exploited for profit. They pay zero taxes on the profits they make. They teach general knowledge in a lecture style. Is that worth it? Why do kids want this? Why do parents make them do this? Because they did it when they were kids? We are in a new age. 

Fast forward over a century later, the digital age. Children have smartphones, smartphones with all the information they need. Why sit in a room listening to someone lecture when you can just look something up? Children are put in classrooms that are part of a school, that are part of a district, that is part of a school board. These scaled up versions of education pump out millions of children with a broad range of general knowledge, or at least that is the intent. Now most of these kids go to college, work a 9-5 job, and start a family and the cycle goes on with their children. That is not fulfillment, that is not happiness for most. The average school tuition has increased by more than 200% while the average salary of college graduates has plateaued since the start of mass schooling. We live in an era of economies of “unscale”. With artificial intelligence and cloud computing, vertically integrated corporations with huge factories and inventory cannot compete with lean, agile startups that rent cloud storage on Amazon Web Services, outsource manufacturing to Chinese factories, and utilize open source Machine Learning algorithms instead of spending great capital to build it all individually. This gives power to creative, niche startups that can effectively run a business from their basement. Think back to the 1990′s. The internet had just gone mainstream, thousands of employees quit their jobs to create internet companies during the Dot-Com Boom before it crashed. They would plan their IPO before even incorporating, this new technology was a home run in their eyes. How does this relate to education? The rapid evolution of technology can be attributed to new platforms. Telecommunications created a global platform for information to be spread from Boston to Australia in an instant, the internet has revolutionized virtually every industry. My generation is growing up in the advent of the AI and cloud computing platform. Essentially, the innovation of big tech platforms should equate to radically different education. However, because school systems have no incentive to change and make less profit, they are still preparing kids for an industrial era to be interchangeable pieces working for large corporations rather than agile startups and small to medium companies. 

Artificial Intelligence will radically change education. Harvard, Stanford, and a few other large brand schools have noticed this trend and created online courses already that use machine learning engines to tailor a course to a students understanding. AI can use big data to understand how a pupil learns, what he/she is struggling in, and create a report on their level of thought that is a perfect representation on what they can do, rather than a vague degree. Many companies such as Microsoft and Google are receptive to this and an increasing number of developers enter the software field with no degrees. Because there is no system that could exemplify a student’s intelligence in the past, an expensive degree was the next best thing and college became a booming business but quite an enslaving process for the children utilizing it. AI can guide a student while virtual classrooms and teachers can connect to children across the globe for real organic conversation. Now, the physical classroom is very important for social development and should still be used to an extent. Perhaps we Americans should look towards Finland, the country with the best ranked educational system in the world. Their primary and secondary schools are incredibly different. School days are 3 hours long, there is no homework, and there are no private schools. The philosophy is that kids should be emancipated from the institutions and be left to be kids and develop intuitiveness organically through real world social experiences. There are no private schools so that rich families send their kids to public schools and those parents make sure the school is up to par with what they can afford.This forces schools nationwide to keep a standard that is universal, much unlike the U.S. with many inner city public schools without internet while capitalistic private and public district schools spend money on football field renovations. 

To create a more productive generation of students, we must “unscale” education, remove private schools, reduce length of school hours, ban or at least regulate student loan firms, set a price ceiling on all college tuitions and utilize the platform of Artificial Intelligence to create a market of one for all students starting from Kindergarten to beyond college. Hiring more teachers and building would effectively make the problem worse. Teachers can be the greatest minds on the planet, but under such a restrictive there is little hope to save a whole generation. Khan Academy has implemented an unscaled online system, leading the way for more personalized education programs. There is little chance this can happen unless this is derived from the Federal Government, which is famously bureaucratic and slow to act especially with education. Changes are needed. This will make children more excited to learn, ask questions and solve the great global issues that are long overdue to be solved. Kids will strengthen critical thinking skills and experience freedom of thought that will create a wave of further technological development and accelerate American education to new heights. 

[warrior-nunya]

Listen Motocrossed is one of my favorite DCOMs and then I’ve also been treated with a couple pieces of art with Kara and a dirt bike so of course I felt the pull to do a bullet fic having never written a creative word in my life

All I know about motocross and racing is what I saw on Disney Channel at age 12.

Kara is the headlining 250cc racer for Krypton Racing--an upstart racing “team” that really only consists of Kara, her manager Alex, and Brainy as her mechanic.

Alex used to ride but after one to many crashes which resulted in either a broken bone(s) or a concussion, she has decided to step into a sideline role.

Kara is immediately successful in that she typically finishes in the Top 3 and makes some prize money. 

As she competes in more races, traveling farther and training more often, the expenses for upkeep, travel, lodging, etc continue to mount.

It becomes clear that in order to continue racing and making money, they need to hire another rider.  Time’s are tough, but they need to find someone before the end of the season in order to secure a chance to race next season.

Meanwhile, even though Kara is quickly rising to superstar status, she is also gaining the ire of Luthor Racing and their own talented rider, Lex Luthor.

Lex had been in the top spot until Kara came onto the scene and began to steal races and the hearts of many of the Luthor Racing fans.

Another person who isn’t immune to the charming, All-American new girl is Lex’s mechanic/engineer--Lena Luthor.

While Kara and Lena have never actually interacted, Lena has paid more attention to Kara during races trying to pass along lap information to Lex as he positions himself to beat Kara out in the final laps.

Lena only knows so much about Kara’s racing style because she HAS to know in order to make sure Lex has every advantage possible.

Lena spends time between races and cities watching film and taking diligent notes on how Kara manages to squeak past Lex in nearly all of their races.

If she also makes mental notes about Kara’s flowing golden locks or muscular arms as she stands on the podium and holds her latest trophy above her head, that’s nobody’s business but her own.

Lena is constantly blamed for Lex’s shortcomings by Lillian who acts as team manager but really just funds the cause and blames Lena’s for all the bad happenings.

Back at Krypton racing, Alex says she’s found the perfect rider to come in as a 125cc competitor--enter Nia Nal.

With two riders now, Brainy’s expertise is stretched a little thin, plus he may or may not have a slight infatuation for the newest member of Krypton Racing.

Kara and Alex decide perhaps with their extra earnings now from races, they can also hire an additional mechanic and lessed Brainy’s load.

Kara knows about Luthor Racing, of course, because she is constantly battling Lex for a place on the podium.  And the battles are fierce.

She knows about his sister who graduated with a mechanical engineering degree from some fancy university.

She knows she’s read articles in Dirt Bike magazine about Lena’s ability to diagnose even the most complicated issues AND fix them in record time.

She’s seen the dark-haired, ivory-skinned beauty holding up lap times and other important information on the sidelines.

She’s maybe gotten distracted and cut a corner too tight, her bike slipping from under her and costing her a cool $2500 bonus for beating the track record.

But she’s never spoken to her directly.

After a particularly brutal race by Lex (Lena can only do so much to help him if he’s going to insist on ignoring her messages on the board before the last turn), he shouts at Lena near their trailer just as Kara is walking by on her way from the food truck with two chili cheese dogs, one in each hand.

Cue Kara immediately forgetting about her delicious snacks and jogging over with proverbial steam coming out her ears.

Stopping to stand just a centimeter in front of Lena’s shoulder and facing Lex she tells him that he is a washed up playboy who will never have anything as shiny as his bald head in his hands after a race again and berates him for being a pompous ass to his teammate/family.

Lex is stunned and has no retort so he growls, throws his helmet against the trailer and walks inside to the lounge compartment.

Kara turns to Lena and offers her a small smile, checks if she’s ok.  Lena nods and returns the smile.

“I see the messages on your board and if he would follow your directions, he’d have me beat 9 times out of 10,” Kara says with a wink.  “You don’t deserve to be treated like that, especially not when you’re....well, you.”

Lena blushes just a touch and chuckles softly.  “Thanks, but maybe try to keep your eyes on your own board.  Wouldn’t want you to...slip up.” She says with a playful smirk of her own leaving Kara to stare after her as Lena walks to the food truck.

The next race goes much the same for Lex and Lena has had just about enough.  Word has been spreading that Krypton Racing is looking for an additional mechanic.  She looks at Lex after his latest tyrade, shoves her clipboard into his chest and giddily exclaims, “if you can do better without me? Prove it.  I quit.”

She walks over to where Alex and Brainy are looking at Kara’s bike, trying to figure out why the throttle is not throttling up to it’s potential.

“Heard you were looking for a mechanic.” She says hopefully.  Brainy and Alex share a look of surprise before Alex smiles and nods. “Yeah, yeah we are but based on what I’ve heard, we may be a little below your skill set.”

“Sounds perfect, when can I start?”

Kara comes around the corner and freezes, nearly dropping the bag of popcorn she’s cradling to her chest when she sees Lena.

“Kara, meet your new mechanic.” Alex says just a bit too cheerfully as she motions to Lena.

Kara’s surprised smile turns into more of an excited grin as Lena reaches for a handful of popcorn.

Obviously there’s a scene where Kara gives Lena a gentle ride around the track after a race, which Lena holding on tight.

Also the quintessential scene of Lena and Kara taking a dip in a hidden water hole in the middle of nowhere after Kara says “I know a place” and convinces Lena to hop on and hold on tight.  In my version thought they totally make out though.

There’s also a scene where Lena is teaching Kara about fixing her bike and showing her why she’s doing this and twisting this cap that way.  Kara is 100% paying attention and not thinking about kissing the grease smudge off Lena’s cheek, or putting her mouth over the freckle on her neck.

Lots of Alex, Brainy, Nia shenanigans against Kara for her subtly regarding Lena before they finally just do the damn thing.

Finally, Lena knows how to ride a dirt bike just fine.  Kara just likes to convince her to hop on the back of her bike.  Lena scoffs and likes to pretend its annoying but she doesn’t mind it so much.

[worryinglyinnocent]

Fic: Love is a Layered Cake (9/10)

Summary: Summer has come, and with it, the Great British Bake-Off. Sheep farmer and spinner Rum Gold is one of twelve contestants competing for the crown in the latest show. In addition to navigating the perils of televised baking, ridiculous challenges and his fellow bakers, he also has to contend with his undeniable crush on one of the judges, the beautiful and talented Belle French…

Rated: G

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[Week One: Cake] [Week Two: Biscuits] [Week Three: Bread] [Week Four: Pies and Tarts] [Week Five: Desserts] [Week Six: Pastry] [Week Seven: European-Inspired Cakes] [Week Eight: Advanced Dough] [AO3]

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Week Nine - Patisserie

In which Belle takes a trip and Gold takes a chance.

Also, Jefferson runs around the tent waving his arms around for reasons that are not entirely clear to the rest of the bakers.

===

Ok, before we begin, in case of confusion (because this has confused me before): I am using ‘grill’ in the British English sense of the word, meaning to cook with high heat from above.

===

“You know, this room looks incredibly big with only the four of us in it.”

Gold had to agree with Jefferson’s statement as the four semi-finalists clustered around the refreshment table ready for the day’s filming to begin. It was hard to believe that they’d lost eight other contestants since they’d started, when the room had been full of people who were only just getting to know each other. Now they were all good friends, and Gold really wished that they could all make it through to the final. Not that they wouldn’t see whoever didn’t make it at the big party on the final day, but it would have been nice to have them all there till the end.

“It really makes you think, doesn’t it?” Regina said. “Because there’s always a week between each session, you get used to being away and so you don’t really notice when there are less people than there were before, but when you get down to there being so few, you can tell. The room really does look huge now, and you’d think that it would still look so huge even with so many more of us in it.”

“I suppose that there were some larger than life personalities in there too,” Jefferson said, a trace of irony in his voice. Jefferson himself was definitely one of those personalities, and Gold found that although the younger man had not mellowed in any way since he had started the competition, always as bright and effervescent as ever, Gold was getting used to him. Of all the people he could be spending his weekends with, he could certainly think of worse.

“Hello darlings!” Ella made her usual grand entrance into the room, sunglasses on, and she proceeded to hug them all in turn, much to Gold’s alarm. He had never been the most tactile of people and being enveloped in a cloud of expensive perfume and cigarette smoke was somewhat overwhelming. “You’ve all done so well to get this far and no matter what happens today, we’re all incredibly proud of you. This is it, nearly the end. You can all breathe a sigh of relief soon.”

“Anyone would think that they weren’t enjoying themselves, Ella.” Ursula followed her partner into the room and began pouring coffee for them both. “You’re making it sound like this is some kind of torturous adventure we’ve put them in”

“Well, for some of them I believe it is a torturous adventure.” Ella winked at Gold, who did not even attempt to hope that no-one else had picked up on it. Although he was used to the cameras following them around by now, he still wasn’t completely comfortable with them and he for one would be incredibly happy when the entire thing was over. He couldn’t regret his time here though, not when it had brought him and Belle to the edge of something wonderful. That was another reason for the end of the competition to come as soon as possible. Once they were no longer judge and contestant, the something that had been building up between them could blossom into something more. Their little proto-dates could finally become actual dates.

Over Ella’s shoulder he could see Belle and Granny milling about outside the little ante-room that they remained ensconced away in during the pre-production time, and presently she caught his eye, smiling and waving. Gold couldn’t help but smile back; there was something in Belle’s expression that was utterly infectious. He wondered if they would be able to have another little talk tonight after filming had finished. The snide voice at the back of his mind that had started sounding very much like his ex-wife kept telling him that it would never work, and that as soon as the competition was over, they would go their separate ways and he would go back to being a nobody in the middle of nowhere on his sheep farm, and Belle would continue into the heights of her television fame. No-one could expect her to really give him a chance when there was so much vast difference between their two lives. Gold sighed and tried to tamp that voice down as best he could. There was definitely something there, a little spark. They both felt it, they had both discussed it, and they both knew that they wanted to fan that spark into a flame as soon as it was possible to do so. They were taking things slowly, doing it properly and getting to know each other. Lord knew that Gold was well aware of the dangers of rushing into things. And after all, everyone else seemed to be encouraging them. Aunt Elvira was already looking for new hats for the wedding, and it had become almost impossible to hide his attraction from Jefferson and the others.

Belle disappeared into her room with Granny and Astrid came in to get their mics fitted. The process didn’t take anywhere near as long now that there were so few of them and they were all used to having the wires attached, and Astrid chattered on happily throughout, telling them all about the various delights that Leroy had been baking since he left the tent two weeks ago. In fact, everyone’s relationships seemed to be on the table that morning. It was as if there was a sense of excitement in the air about the forthcoming finale and they were taking the opportunity to gush about it now, rather than waiting till the next week, when they would all be too stressed at the prospect of actually being in the finale to talk about anything but baking and what weird and wonderful tasks they’d be set in the ultimate test of their baking ability. Regina and Mal seemed to still be going strong weeks after Mal’s exit from the tent; Emma was already trying to fix it for her son and Jefferson’s daughter to meet and hopefully become friends, and Jefferson’s wife was willing to reorganise flight paths in order to be there for the party next Sunday. Gold was rather perturbed by this until it was explained that she was an air stewardess and scheduled to be flying to France at the time of the event.

Soon, though, it was time for the day’s filming to begin, and all excitement about next week had to be put aside in favour of concentrating on this week. It was going to be a tough weekend; the week before the final was always one of the most tricky, and considering the things that they were going to have to make, this particular season was no different. Gold found his place at the back of the tent, although since there were so few of them and the work benches had been respaced, this was actually much nearer the middle than it had been at the start of the show. He glanced down at the ingredients stacked neatly on the bench in front of him, checking that he had everything he needed. The production team were very good, and so far there had never been an instance where anybody had been missing any of their requested ingredients.

“Good morning bakers!” Ursula began brightly, bringing his attention back to the front of the tent. “Welcome to the first day of one of the more challenging weeks in the bake off: patisserie.”

“For your signature challenge this morning, Granny and Belle would like you to make twenty-four cream horns, twelve each of two different flavours,” Ella continued, and Ursula raised an eyebrow.

“You know, I’m amazed that you didn’t use that opportunity to sneak in a terrifically inappropriate joke there,” she said.

“The morning is still young, Ursula. There will be plenty of time for horny innuendo later.” Ella winked and turned her attention back to the bakers. “You can use full puff, rough puff or flaky pastry, and you have three and a half hours on the clock. So, on your marks.”

“Get set.”

“Bake!”

At the bench beside him, Emma was cursing having to make pastry yet again, but Gold didn’t pay her any mind. He’d chosen to make a rough puff pastry for his cream horns and he needed to get on with it quickly in order for it to have the maximum turning and chilling time, so that hopefully the finished product would be light, puffy and golden. This particular bake was not something that he had ever made before the bake-off and his attempts at home had ended up with mixed results. As Emma always said, there were some things that it was just easier to buy from a shop, and cream horns were one of them. Puff pastry desserts weren’t exactly a staple in the Gold household, and there’d never been any need to practise. The problem he had always found came when he had to wrap strips of pastry around the moulds to create the classic shape. He’d never been able to get them very even, and occasionally there were a few gaping holes, which wouldn’t be good for putting any filling in. At least in the tent he had the advantage of having enough moulds for all his bakes and not having to think about anything else at the same time as he was making them.

Well, he corrected mentally as Belle, Granny and Ella came over with the camera crew for the first of the weekend’s usual interrogations. He didn’t have to think about anything else, but knowing his brain, he was probably going to end up thinking about Belle for at least part of the time that he ought to be concentrating.

“Good morning Raymond,” Belle said.

“Good morning.” He liked to think that he was getting better at speaking on camera, but he couldn’t help glancing over at Walter every few seconds when he was supposed to be looking at the judges.

“So, tell us all about your cream horns,” Granny said, pulling his attention back to her.

“I’m making half mocha and hazelnut, and half lemon and ginger.”

“Interesting flavours,” Ella said. “I have to say it, lemon and ginger is a combination I’ve always associated with cold and flu remedies, but I’m sure that yours will be delicious.”

Belle rolled her eyes. “Ella, you know how you and Ursula are always ticking me and Granny off for saying things that dent the bakers’ confidence? Well, comparing someone’s cream horns to cough mixture is probably along those same lines.”

“I said that I was sure that they’d taste delicious!” Ella protested. “Ok, ok. I’ll go and stand in the corner.”

Ella left them then in a mock sulk, but Granny and Belle took it all in their stride, and Gold was happy to tell them more about the bake. The mocha and hazelnut pastries were dipped in dark chocolate and sprinkled with nuts, and filled with a coffee cream, whilst the lemon and ginger were filled with lemon curd and cream and studded with candied ginger pieces. Now that he thought about it, Ella did have a point about the flu remedies, but with any luck, the end result wouldn’t be too medicinal. The judges left him to it, and he watched out of the corner of his eye as Belle went to collect Ella from her sulking corner. He suspected that the two presenters would be playing up for the cameras more than ever this week, with it being such an important week for all the bakers, and he couldn’t say that he minded in the slightest. As long as he was able to get on and concentrate, then he didn’t really care what happened in the rest of the tent. That wasn’t entirely true, naturally he didn’t want anyone to have an absolutely terrible disaster in the penultimate week, but he wasn’t paying all that much attention to the other bakers. It was only once the pastry was in the oven that he really had any leisure to investigate the competition. He’d tried to wrap the horns as tightly as he could to prevent any leakage, but he’d have to wait until he was actually filling them for the moment of truth.

Jefferson’s bench immediately garnered his attention. It resembled an explosion in a greetings card factory, with pink and purple glitter everywhere. Regina and Emma seemed to be similarly perplexed.

“Unicorn horns!” Jefferson said, as if that explained everything. On receiving blank looks, he rolled his eyes. “If you’re going to make a cream horn, you need to at least try and play on the whole ‘horn’ thing,” he continued. “And since this is a family friendly TV show, I decided to take a leaf out of my daughter’s book and create some unicorn horns. Pink and glitter are the way forward.”

“Right.” Regina didn’t seem entirely convinced. “Are you sure they’ll be edible?”

“Of course. You’ll get high as a kite from all the sugar and e-numbers, but I’m hoping that in spite of the buzzing between your ears, they will actually taste nice.”

“That is a problem with using a lot of artificial colours in baking,” Granny pointed out. “A lot of the time you can just taste the artificialness rather than any other kind of flavour.”

To that end, Jefferson scooped up a fingerful of edible glitter and licked it, making a face.

“Yeah… I think I’ll stick with the light dusting I’ve been giving them in practice.”

His reaction had stirred Ella and Ursula’s morbid curiosity and they gathered around his bench to sample the uncut glitter for themselves. Gold left them to it; it was time for his pastries to come out of the oven and hopefully cool in time for them to be decorated and filled. The waiting game was beginning again. It felt like the stakes were far higher in this challenge than they had been in any other, and Gold supposed that they were in a way. The tension in the tent, apart from the distractions going on around Jefferson’s bench, was almost unbearable, with all the bakers almost afraid to look each other in the eye for fear of either putting each other off or getting distracted and having a disaster at the last minute. Gold tried to focus his attention entirely on the pastry in front of him and not get caught up in the completely unintentional mind games that were going on in the tent. The pastries had baked to a nice golden brown and they seemed to be crisp enough, so it was time to fill them. His hands were shaking, and he clenched them into fists to try and regain some control.

“Are you all right?” The voice was low but obviously directed at him, and he glanced up to see Emma looking over at him with a concerned expression. He held up one shaking hand and she grimaced. “Well, better today than tomorrow when we have to make something even more fiddly. Let me know if you need a slightly steadier hand.”

Gold was grateful for her offer of help and nodded his thanks as she went back to piping dark chocolate cream into her own pastries; he didn’t want to distract her from her own work if possible, and he knew that he just had to get on with it. That was the general consensus in the tent, and it had fallen into silence once more, with Ella and Ursula leaving Jeff to his filling and decorating and just patrolling the tent in case of any last-minute breakdowns. Gold couldn’t rule anything out just yet, and kept his head down, trying to lose himself in the process, tasting the fillings to make sure that they were perfect. The lemon and ginger didn’t taste too medicinal, so he thought that he would be all right in spite of Ella’s misgivings. There were a few places where the cream inside could be spotted through tiny gaps in the pastry, but all in all they didn’t look too messy.

“Oh damn!”

He glanced over at Emma, who had decided to display her horns vertically like ice-cream cones, drizzling chocolate sauce down inside some of them, but a few of the cones were not entirely sealed up at the bottom and the sauce and cream was dripping out.

“Well, at least they still look vaguely clean on the outside; all the mess is on the workbench,” she said, salvaging the cones and arranging them on a plate instead as she stuck pieces of chocolate flake into the top of each one.

“It’s almost like Elsa’s returned to the tent in spirit,” Regina mused. “This is exactly the kind of thing that would happen to her.”

“Yes, well, I’d appreciate it if she hadn’t chosen me to pass her clumsiness on to,” Emma muttered, wiping chocolate off the bench and eyeing up the finished cream horns critically, swiping at them with kitchen paper to try and get the stray splashes off the pastry. Gold couldn’t help but give a snort of laughter; this little exchange had lightened the mood in the tent a little and by the time Ursula was calling an end to the challenge and he was arranging his pastries at the end of his workbench, he was actually able to smile again.

With so few of them in the tent this week, the clean-up did not take anywhere near as long as normal.

“I suppose I should be grateful that the terror of the judging isn’t hanging over us for as long, but at the same time, it is nice having a bit of breathing space,” Jefferson said. The man appeared to be covered in glitter from head to toe, perhaps it was not just Emma who was being affected by Elsa’s influence today. All too soon the cameras had finished doing their fancy photography, and it was time for Belle and Granny to go to work. Jefferson’s offerings received universal praise, having come out looking remarkably polished in spite of all the glitter and sprinkles, and Regina’s salted caramel confections also received compliments. Then came Gold’s turn.

“Well, you’ll be pleased to know that the lemon and ginger ones don’t taste at all of Lemsip,” Granny said. Gold gave a nervous laugh; he hadn’t entirely scared that they would taste that way, but ever since Ella had mentioned it, it had been nagging at the back of his mind.

“Yes, the flavours are very good,” Belle agreed, “and you have a nice bake and a nice crispness to the pastry. I would have liked to have seen a few more layers, but you have definition and lamination in there, so your method was good, just pushed for time.”

“My only real criticism is that they look a bit messy,” Granny said, pointing out the places where the strips of pastry had been wrapped around their moulds unevenly in the bid to stop any splits and holes. “But they taste lovely, so very well done.”

Emma was the last to face the judge’s scrutiny; they enjoyed the inventiveness that she had brought to the table with her ice-cream inspired cream horns, but they had ended up rather soggy on the inside thanks to her efforts with the melted chocolate. When the cameras were off and the contestants left to their own devices whilst the tent was reset ready for the technical in the afternoon, Gold chanced to breathe a sigh of relief. It wasn’t his best performance, but it wasn’t his worst. All things considered, he thought that he and Emma had come out of that one pretty evenly matched.

“It’s always unnerving when it’s this close, so close to the end,” Emma was muttering as they made their way back up to the break room for lunch. “I mean, I know it’s a good thing because we’re all on a par with each other and we’re all in with a chance of winning, but the closer we are going into the showstopper tomorrow, the tighter it’s going to be. It’s much more nerve-wracking than if there’s definitely someone at the head of the pack or if there’s someone lagging behind.”

Gold could only nod his agreement, but thankfully he was distracted from any more melancholy strains of thought by Jefferson and Regina’s antics. The two of them were taking selfies with Jefferson’s leftover unicorn horns. It was quite heartwarming to watch really, as Gold had never really seen Regina’s fun side all that much during their time in the tent together. She had always been the most serious and most focussed, and it was good to see her let her hair down and act like just as much of a dork as the rest of them were. Emma just gave a good-natured sigh and settled down to eat her lunch, and Gold thought back to her words. Perhaps the technical this afternoon would thin them out a little. His only hope was that he was not at the bottom end of the spectrum.

X

The weather had turned by the time the contestants were being ushered back down into the tent for their second challenge, with the murky clouds that had been rolling in from the horizon now closing in fully and the first drops of rain pattering down on the roof of the tent. In a way, Gold felt that it reflected his mood perfectly. The morning challenge had not been a complete disaster, in fact he thought that he’d managed to acquit himself quite well considering his inexperience in the field, but unlike Jefferson and Regina, he could never bring himself to be at all enthusiastic or excited about the technical, and the grim weather was an excellent companion for his current pessimistic feelings. Patisserie was always a difficult technical challenge, usually something incredibly specific and delicate that could go terribly wrong at any of its many stages, and the sparseness of the recipes that they were given never helped at all.

“Good afternoon, bakers,” Ella began, before peering out of the tent window. “Not that it’s looking particularly good out there today, but that’s beside the point. Welcome to your technical challenge, which today has been set by Granny. Any sage words of advice for us, Granny?”

“Be precise,” Granny said, and there was a warning tone in her voice that Gold felt honour-bound to take notice of.

“Well, that was very helpful.” Ursula shepherded the two judges out of the tent, handing them an umbrella as they went. “Never let it be said that Granny is not cryptic in her assistance. Nevertheless, let’s push on. This afternoon, Granny and Belle would like you to make a schichttorte.”

Ella spluttered. “A what?”

“A schichttorte,” Ursula enunciated clearly. “It’s a light German sponge cake made up of several layers: Schichte in the German, hence the name, get your head out of the gutter, Ella. Don’t worry, we’ve never heard of it either. All we know is that you’ve got two hours on the clock, so on your marks.”

“Get set.”

“Bake!”

Gold pulled the familiar checked tea towel off the ingredients on his bench and looked down at the recipe. On the face of it, it seemed to be a fairly simple sponge cake mixture covered with a chocolate glaze. Nothing too difficult about that. Then he read the method, the first stage being ‘pre-heat the grill’. Gold blinked. The grill? Surely that was a misprint. No-one grilled cakes. Or did they? No, reading through the rest of the recipe it seemed that they would definitely be grilling the cakes, cooking very thin layers of batter to different levels of golden brown to create a striped, layered cake. Timing the bake - well, grill - of each layer was going to be crucial in order to make sure that the alternate layers were all the same colour, and the recipe stated that there had to be twenty layers. The majority of his time limit would be taken up with cooking the thing, so it would probably be a good idea to get a move on. Looking around the tent, he could see that the others were having similar trouble coming to terms with the idea of grilling a cake.

Still, there was nothing for it but to get on with it.

“It’s looking a bit like a stack of pancakes,” Jefferson mused as he ladled another spoonful of batter onto his previously grilled layer, shaking the cake tin vigorously to try and make it spread evenly without working the mixture too much. “I wonder what it’ll look like on the outside when it’s finished and we take it out of the tin.”

For his part, Gold wasn’t all that enthusiastic about finding out. The entire thing had just entered the realms of weirdness in his mind.

“You know, I think this is similar to the baumkuchen that Lance was talking about,” Emma said; unseen where she was kneeling on the floor in front of her grill, trying to tell by eye how brown the layers were. “The one that they cook over a spit. That would end up with a lot of fine layers like this.”

“Yes. Like the age rings on a tree,” Gold mused. “Hence the name, I suppose. Tree cake.”

“Yeah, I don’t suppose your Aunt Miriam had a recipe for this stashed away in her cupboards, did she?”

Gold shook his head; if there was such a thing then he hadn’t found it in his forays a few weeks ago when he had been looking for kugelhupf recipes. “It would be a bit late to pull it out now,” he pointed out. “I don’t think I can get to Scotland and back in two hours.”

“One hour, actually,” Ella said casually. “Half time, folks! You have one hour remaining!”

Gold cursed under his breath at their short schedule. He still wasn’t even half done with his layer baking, and he still had to make the glaze. Perhaps it would be best to forgo watching the grill and leave it to timers so that he could get on with other things whilst the layers continued to cook. At the same time, though, he really didn’t trust the grill and he wanted to make sure that nothing burned to a crisp the moment his back was turned.

In the end he decided to take a leap of faith, he was going to have to if he was going to get finished in time. The ovens in the tent were top of the range and brand new, and they had never let him down yet, but inevitably, today would be the day.

Time continued to tick down, and Gold just kept building up the layers in his cake, wishing he knew how the others were doing, from a sense of timing perspective rather than any desire to know who was doing the best. Everyone seemed to be at roughly the same stage, and it was going to be very tight to time. Even Ella and Ursula had decided to take a back seat again, not engaging in any of their usual antics as the bakers raced against the clock. The cake was still baking hot on the top when he pulled it out having cooked the final layer, and the thick glaze was very obviously melting on the sides.

Jefferson was right though. It did look like a stack of pancakes.

Gold crossed his fingers and winged up a prayer as the judges called time on the challenge. The four cakes were placed in prime positions on the judging table, and the four bakers finally had the chance to breathe again as they waited for the results. Gold certainly wasn’t going to be sorry to see the back of the technical challenges when he did leave the tent for good; it seemed that the more complicated they were, the less time they got, and the more down to the wire everything became. The cups of tea that Ursula handed around to the contestants during the clean-up were well-deserved.

The judges re-entered the tent and began to get to work. Gold was rather alarmed when Granny cut into the first one and proceeded to crouch down till she was eye level with it and start poking it viciously with the sharp knife.

“Oh good lord,” Emma murmured beside him. “Is she really going to count all the layers in each cake?”

As it turned out, yes, Granny was going to count all the layers in each cake. Regina was on twenty, but that could be expected of her. She excelled in all things precision, and Gold knew that something would have been very wrong with her if she hadn’t hit the exact number of layers that the recipe stated. Emma was on eighteen having run out of time. Jefferson was on nineteen having had similar issues. Gold was startled when Granny announced that his cake had twenty-one layers. He thought that he’d been counting up pretty well, and he’d tried not to get too distracted throughout the process.

“No, definitely twenty-one,” Granny said. “Is it better to have too many or too few, do you think?”

Belle spread her hands. “It’s your recipe, Granny, so I think that’s up to you to decide.”

“Hmm.” The question was evidently a trickier one than appeared, as Granny continued to frown, lost in thought, until it was time to rank the cakes.

Emma was last, without enough layers. Gold just pipped Jefferson to second, having got a better consistency of glaze on the top. Naturally, Regina won, having been the only one to actually get the right number of layers. All things considered, though, they hadn’t really spread out as much as they might have done in terms of their standing for star baker and leaving the tent. It was really all going to come down to the wire. Any one of them might have a bad day tomorrow and any one of them might pull something out of the bag at the last minute and steal the crown.

“Hey.”

Gold was so lost in thought that he almost missed Belle waiting for him outside the tent as he left to get a taxi back to his hotel, hoping that he would get a good night’s sleep in anticipation of the nerve-wracking events of the next day, but not anticipating one. He smiled.

“Hey yourself.”

“Well done in there today,” she continued. “I know how tense it gets towards the end, when everyone’s made friends with everyone else and you know that the slightest hiccup could prove fatal. It’s good to see you holding it together. Sorry, that gives the impression that I didn’t think you would hold it together. I’ve got complete faith in you. I guess I’m just glad that you don’t look like you’re about to collapse from nervous exhaustion, because I really wouldn’t wish that on you…” Belle tailed off. “I’m gabbling, aren’t I?”

“Just a little bit. But thank you, anyway. For your concern.”

Belle smiled. “I’ve found that I quite like being concerned about you, Rum. Although I’m glad you no longer look like you’re about to jump into the nearest freezer whenever the cameras come up to you.”

“Oh, I still want to do that,” Gold said. “I think I’m just too stressed to show it at this point.”

They both laughed at that, and in that moment, Gold received the impression of something more hovering on the horizon, something unspoken and intense that was just out of reach, something that was reassuring him that whatever it was, it was just a couple of weeks until it could come to fruition and reveal itself. It was tempting to give into it now, but Gold knew that here, just outside the tent with the rest of the crew and the other bakers milling around, was not the best time or place.

“Well, I’ll see you tomorrow,” Belle finished. He wondered if she was feeling that unspoken temptation as well, and he nodded.

“Till tomorrow.”

In spite of the stresses of the competition and the no doubt sleepless night awaiting him, Gold could not help but smile. It was a reaction that Belle just automatically brought out in him; her own smile could always make him see the best in life. No matter what happened tomorrow, there was an unspoken something with Belle, and that was enough for him for now.

X

The atmosphere in the break room on the second morning was far more subdued than it had been the day before. This was the final challenge before the grand finale, and it was weighing heavily on everyone’s minds that soon, one of them would be the last to leave the tent and would have missed out on their place in the finale by such a small margin. Gold would certainly be peeved if he was sent home at this late stage, but at the same time he really didn’t want any of his newly-made friends to go either. At least he could rest easy in the knowledge that whoever did make it through to the final week definitely deserved to be there. The judging had been incredibly close the previous day, there was barely anything in it, so it was all coming down to the next six or so hours. In a way, that made it even worse. At least if one of them had done a bad job coming in to this last challenge, it would have been easier to pick a winner and loser, but there were no standouts at either end of the spectrum.

“Anyone would think that we were all about to be shot,” Jefferson remarked, dunking the end of a croissant into his cup of coffee absentmindedly, then cringing when he realised that doing so was really not to be recommended. “I know that it’s the final countdown so to speak, but whatever happens, none of us are going to expire at the end of it.”

Gold snorted. “That’s all right for you to say. I’ve been on the verge of a heart attack for the last eight weeks.”

“If you do have a heart attack, we can safely say that this has been the most dramatic season of the bake-off there’s ever been,” Jefferson mused. “Pork pie proposals, the tent nearly getting set on fire, contestants being disqualified… You know, it’s almost a shame that we had to sign a gag order to keep quiet until the show airs, because I’d give very good money to see what Zelena would say in interviews to some trashy gossip magazine about her experiences in the tent.”

Regina made a face. “Really? I wouldn’t give any kind of money to read about that witch. You’d have to be paying me.”

“You can’t deny that she provided us with a lot of entertainment whilst she was here,” Jefferson said. “We haven’t had nearly as many bets about green foodstuffs since she’s been gone. Don’t worry, I’m not going to say that I miss her because I definitely don’t. I miss her comedy value more than anything.”

Regina just raised an eyebrow, not entirely convinced. At least it had got the conversation in the room started again and they weren’t all sitting around like depressed and stressed lemons, waiting for the final judgement. The morbid humour continued until Ella and Ursula entered the room and the contestants all tried to hide the fact that they were secretly terrified. The presenters weren’t buying it at all.

“It’s always like this on the penultimate week,” Ella said airily. “Everyone’s hoping that they get through, but they’ve made such good friends with everyone else that they really don’t want to hope that someone else goes home in their stead. Sometimes I think that Belle and Granny would do better to just pick a name out of a hat.”

“Patisserie’s always the hardest week, I think,” Ursula mused. “That’s probably why it almost always comes at the end. By the time we get to this stage, we’re left with the crème de la crème and the offerings are always amazing.”

Gold could only hope that his own offerings would be up to the standard that the judges were looking for. There was no room for error at all in this challenge; the slightest mistake could be enough to send him home. Unfortunately, this was just the sort of bake in which everything had the potential to go wrong all at the same time.

It was a long final challenge this week so they were ushered down into the tent slightly earlier than usual to make sure that they would finish on time. All of the workbenches were virtually covered in ingredients and equipment, and Gold was very glad that the spare workbenches had been reinstalled in the back of the tent to be used as overflow. They were going to need it, what with everything that was going on.

Belle and Granny entered the tent with the two presenters, looking as inscrutable as ever. As always, Gold found himself praying that he would not do anything that would get a disappointed expression from Belle. As pretty as her little pout was when something wasn’t up to her standard, he really didn’t want it to be directed at him or his baking.

“Welcome bakers, to the second day of patisserie week and your final challenge before the final,” Ursula began. “For your showstopper challenge this week, Granny and Belle would like you to make twenty-four entremets. These are small, fine cakes found in the window of French patisserie shops, usually containing several layered elements of sponge and mousse.”

“We’re looking for neatness and precision,” Granny added. “As well as tasting good, these cakes ought to be of display quality. We want to see things of beauty.”

Gold had feared hearing something like that. Whilst he wasn’t as messy as some of the other bakers had been in their time in the tent – Elsa in particular – he and Emma were definitely more inclined towards the more rustic style of baking, whilst Regina and Jefferson were far neater. If anyone was going to get star baker based off this challenge, then it was likely to be one of those two.

“We would like you to make two different types of entremets, twelve of each type. You can use any flavours and components that you wish, and you have five hours on the clock,” Ella concluded. “On your marks.”

“Get set.”

“Bake!”

The challenge began, and Gold looked down at the little action plan that Aunt Elvira had made him write. She made him write one every week, but thus far he had never been able to stick to one, as inevitably everything always took longer to make and chill than it ought to. This week he might actually try and adhere to it a little more. It didn’t help that he had not had chance to practice this particular challenge very much, only having one full practice run that he had completely forgotten to time. All the different elements that made up the entremets had been practised a few times, but actually having them all put together was another matter entirely.

The first things to make would be the jellies that were going inside half of the cakes, so that they had the maximum amount of time to chill before assembly, and then the sponges that would form the bases and collars. As long as he didn’t get distracted, then everything would be all right. There wasn’t a whole lot to distract him in the tent other than the other bakers, and whilst Jefferson might be a spectacle in and of himself, he could be trusted not to do anything that might unintentionally sabotage the other bakers at this late stage of the game. He was as serious as any of the others about his chances to get into the final, and a quick glance over at his bench showed that he definitely meant business. The tent was remarkably quiet; you could have heard a pin drop, so the slightest loud sound, like the beaters of a hand mixer clanging against a bowl, sounded far too loud. The presenters and judges were talking in hushed tones, not wanting to disturb the tense concentration at work in the tent, and even the camera operators seemed reluctant to get too close in to the workbenches for fear of putting the bakers off their stride.

Still, it was inevitable that the judges would make their rounds at some point, and there was never going to be a point in the challenge where they would not be interrupting something crucial. Gold had been keeping half an eye out for them ever since he started working, not wanting to have an embarrassing squawking reaction to being caught out of the blue and having to waste time refilming.

“So, Raymond, tell us all about your entremets,” Granny said.

“These will be double chocolate entremets,” he said, carefully piping out stripes of chocolate sponge mixture over the baking tray. Having seen the patterned effect that Jefferson had done on his Swiss roll in the first week, he had been tempted to do the same thing on the entremets to give them a little bit more pizazz. “Chocolate and vanilla sponge around the outsides and on the base, and they’ll be filled with dark chocolate and white chocolate mousses and finished off with tempered chocolate decorations.”

“They sound lovely,” Belle said. “What about your others?”

“Those will be raspberry and almond, with layers of almond sponge, raspberry mousse and a raspberry and elderflower jelly, finished with an almond cream.”

It was going to be a difficult undertaking, he already knew that, so he had opted to keep the flavours as simple and hard to mess up as he could so that he could devote as much time as possible to the assembly. If he had to worry about exotic flavours as well, then he might as well throw in the towel there and then. True, that might turn out to be his downfall when the time came, as other bakers tended to get more and more adventurous with their flavours as time went on, but in this challenge, execution was the key to it all, and something that looked immaculate was essential.

The judges made a few more generic remarks in order to fill the time but quickly left him alone. Ella continued to hover for a little while. Normally when the presenters did that, it was because they were angling for a taste of something, but none of Gold’s elements were anywhere near ready for tasting yet. Gold glanced up at her as he stood from putting the sponges into the oven, and his brow furrowed.

“Am I missing something?” he asked. Ella shook her head with a smile.

“No, no. Just the longing looks that were being exchanged between you and Belle.”

Gold cringed as he started measuring out ingredients for the next batch of sponge, the work at least giving him an excuse not to meet Ella’s eyes.

“Is it really that obvious?”

“With clever camera editing no-one watching at home will know,” she assured him. “But to us, yes, it��s incredibly obvious. Don’t worry, you’ve got our blessing, both of you. I probably shouldn’t be distracting you by chatting about it now, but honestly – keep going for it. Those feelings are definitely returned.”

In spite of the pressures of the tent weighing down on him, Gold managed a small smile. He had no doubt that Belle felt the same way about him; their little proto-dates and the promise that they could become something more once the competition was over had told him that much, but to hear it from Ella, someone who knew Belle comparatively well and was considered one of her friends, was heartening, especially when his own feelings towards Belle had been there in the back of his mind and heart for so long before he had even met her. The fact that he might be chasing an unreachable crush had always been a fear present in the back of his mind, and every indication that he got to the contrary served to bolster his confidence. He could make something of this little flirtation with Belle; people wanted him to make something of it and they thought that he deserved to make something of it.

He shook the thoughts away. No use in getting distracted in a daydream romantic future and completely scuppering his chances to get to the final. For the first time since arriving at the tent back in cake week, he had the overwhelming desire to win the thing, rather than just wanting to make it through to the next week. For the first time, he thought that perhaps he was in with a chance of winning the whole thing. He checked the timers and pulled out the first batch of sponge, putting the second one in and getting started on making the chocolate mousses. Timing was going to be the kicker here, as everything needed to chill as it was being assembled to make sure that when the moulds were removed, there would be no unfortunate collapses. The strong smells of chocolate and coffee and coconut were filling the tent, and Gold wondered what the other three were making. Time would tell. There was far too much at stake to get involved in conversations at this stage.

X

Belle didn’t think that she had ever known the tent to be so quiet. It always got quieter as the weeks went on simply by dint of there being less people in it, but even then, by the time the semi-final came around, the contestants usually knew each other well enough to conduct conversations across the tent. It was clear that this particular task needed a hell of a lot more concentration than any of the others had, and she was loath to do anything that might put them off their stride. Normally she and Granny would sit at the front of the tent and chat to pass the time whilst the bakers were working, or they would wander around the tent and see what was happening. Today, though, they sat in silence, watching from a distance and hoping that there would be no last-minute disasters. Belle looked over at Gold at the front of the tent, his long fingers working deftly to assemble his raspberry and almond confections. The jellies had set well, which she was extremely pleased about. Jelly was always a minefield to work with. Now she just had to hope that his mousses would hold together as well. The chocolate ones were already in the freezer firming up, and now he just needed to make the tempered chocolate decorations. On the other side of the tent, Regina was carefully coating her squares in a buttercream crumb mixture that would provide a perfectly smooth surface for a shiny chocolate glaze to be poured over the top. Glazed cakes did look lovely when they were done well, but the glaze shouldn’t be too runny, or else they would just look a mess. Beside her, Emma was attempting to unmould her orange entremets to find that her mousse was not yet set, and they were rushed back into the fridge for another ten minutes. Jefferson was making salted caramel sauce, but Belle still couldn’t work out how he was going to introduce a liquid component into something that was incredibly soft and porous and that needed to spend a lot of time in the fridge in order for it to be perfect. Still, Jefferson was the master of pulling extravagant and unbelievable creations out of the bag, so he was probably the one that she ought to be the least worried about.

Time continued to tick on; Belle never really noticed its passing whilst she was observing in the tent because there was always something going on to keep her attention. The bakers often said that they didn’t know where the time went on challenges like these, and that five hours always sounded like a lot but was never as much time as you thought it was. That was certainly the case now. Ella was calling ten minutes on the challenge, and almost as soon as the words left her mouth, the amount of activity in the tent increased exponentially. Considering that there were only four bakers, they seemed to be making enough hustle and bustle to make up for all the ones that they had lost over the past couple of weeks. Everyone was rushing from fridges to freezers to workbenches and back again, and Jefferson alarmed them all by doing a lap of the tent waving his arms around.

“Are you all right?” Belle asked as he passed her on his way back to his own station.

He nodded. “Yes, just trying not to panic at the last minute. I thought that by pre-emptively panicking, I’d get it all out of my system. Right, time to unmould the entremets.”

Belle wasn’t entirely convinced, but she had been around Jefferson long enough to know that whilst eccentric, the man was completely benign and she shouldn’t worry about him too much. He returned to his bench with the utmost composure, and apart from a few baffled looks exchanged between the others, his little performance went swiftly under the radar.

“Bakers, your time is up!” Ursula called. “Please move your entremets to the end of your benches and step away from your baking equipment.”

The tent gave a collective sigh of relief as the challenge came to a close. Belle didn’t think that it had been any more nerve-wracking than any other showstopper, but then again, it was patisserie and whilst she was a professional baker and pastry chef, the rest of them were not. The runners raced around the tent doing clean-up in record time, and before long, Belle and Granny were standing at the front waiting to pass judgement on all the creations.

It was going to be a tough call, Belle could already tell that just from looking at the plates of delicate mousse cakes on the end of each workbench. There wasn’t really anything that looked obviously out of place that put someone out of the running from the start; from a distance they all looked very neat and well-made. Once they started coming up and the judges could get a closer look at them, then the rougher edges started to show, but no-one had done disgracefully. Regina and Jefferson were the strongest contenders: Jefferson’s salted caramel sauce had managed to remain liquid and remain completely contained within the mousse encasing it, which Belle considered to be a massive achievement. Emma’s orange mousses were still a bit runny in the middle and Gold had similar neatness issues with his raspberry and almond cakes; as they had no collar of sponge around them to cover up any mistakes it made any irregularities very obvious. In terms of taste, though, no-one could really be faulted; their flavours were all spot on.  

“This is probably the most difficult decision we’ve ever had in the history of bake off,” Granny said mournfully, stirring her tea as she gazed over the select offerings on the table in front of her. Belle couldn’t disagree. They were filming their piece to camera whilst the tent got cleaned up ready for the final announcement, and so far all they could do was bemoan how agonising it was to actually come to a decision. All of the bakers had shown incredible skill over the weekend’s three challenges and it was certainly one of the closest semi-finals that she’d ever known. By the time they got to this stage, the contestants were all fairly evenly matched in terms of talent, and the patisserie week usually included challenges that tested all of the main baking skill sets. Usually though, someone would slip up somewhere and give them an out.

“Jefferson’s safe,” Granny said. “If nothing else then for sheer novelty value with the unicorn horns.”

Belle nodded. “Yes, his signature was the best and his showstopper was good too.”

“Emma was last in the technical but she really pulled it back today, and Regina and Raymond have both held their own throughout.”

“You’ve got to pick someone,” Ursula pointed out. “I know we love them all, but we’d get complaints from previous years’ contestants if we let all four of them through to the final.”

“I know, I know. We will pick someone but we’re probably going to have to have another cup of tea before we actually make up our minds.”

“Well, as long as we don’t have to break out the boxing gloves again,” Ella said brightly. Belle rolled her eyes.

“Granny and I have never physically fought over this decision, you know that.”

“Of course I know that, but that doesn’t stop me wondering what it would be like if you did. Our viewership would skyrocket overnight.”

“And we’d probably have to move to a different channel,” Granny observed. “All right, I think we’d better get down to it. I’m sure that you two can keep the bakers entertained whilst we hash out what we’re doing.”

“We’ll be sure to do just that,” Ella said, with a twinkle in her eye that usually meant trouble. “We can play charades.”

The camera had cut by this point, with Walter leaving them alone whilst he went to liaise with the other cameramen, and Granny gave a long-suffering sigh.

“Ella, the last time you played charades with the contestants, we ended up with jam on the ceiling of the break room. The production company has been trying to get it cleaned out of there for the last two years and they’ve now decided that it should just stay there as an artistic feature.”

“People are going to come to this manor house in the off season as tourists and wonder if any grisly murders took place here to leave strange blood stains on the ceiling,” Ella mused. “Still, we shall leave you to your deliberations and go and entertain the troops.” She saluted, and then Ursula and Ella left the little pavilion. Granny sighed, but Belle could only giggle.

“Come on, I think we need a bit of light-heartedness before we have to get down to business,” she said. “This is always the worst decision we have to make.”

“Yes,” Granny said. “So let’s just get on and make it, shall we?”

X

The judges seemed to be taking far longer to make their decision this time than they usually did, and Gold wondered if he was the only one getting paranoid. He looked around. Regina and Emma were looking just as worried as he felt, and even Jefferson was subdued, a far cry from the eccentricity that had come to the fore earlier. Ella and Ursula had given up trying to talk them all down from their respective cliffs, and they now just awaited the judges’ decision with the same trepidation.

Finally Belle and Granny came out of their smaller tent and the presenters went over to confer with them before all four made their way back into the tent for the final bit of filming. Ella began.

“Ladies, Gentlemen, all and sundry, it’s been a fantastic semi-final week and Belle and Granny almost had to resort to drawing straws to work out who was going to be star baker and who was going to be leaving us. The quality that we’ve seen has been absolutely exceptional. So, it’s with great pleasure that I can finally announce that this week’s star baker is Jefferson.”

Jefferson was safe, through to the final, and the relief in his face was almost palpable.

“Unfortunately, there are only three places in the final so we must say goodbye to one of our number,” Ursula continued. “The baker who will not be joining us next week is Emma.”

Emma shrugged, but it was clear that she was devastated not to have made it to the final. The presenters and judges all gathered around her to wish her well, and Gold felt a delayed gut punch. True, this did mean that he was in the final, but it also meant that Emma, the first friend that he had made in the tent, wouldn’t be there, and that saddened him.

It took quite a while for the implications of being in the final to sink in. Strangely enough, the first thing that went through his head was the realisation that this meant Belle would be coming to the filming at the farm next week, and that she would undoubtedly meet Aunt Elvira. This was some cause for concern, but it was soon pushed to the back of his mind as Jefferson came over to congratulate him on making it through to the final week. He’d done it. He’d got through to the final. No matter what happened now, he was in no danger of being sent home. Despite everything that had happened during the last few weeks, both inside the tent and outside it, he had triumphed against all the odds and he was in the last stretch. A giddy grin began to spread over his face, and he considered calling Elvira and Bae to tell them immediately, but ultimately decided to leave them hanging for a while. After all their teasing, it was the least he could do to get back at them.

“Well done.” Belle was grinning too as she came over to congratulate him. “You made it. You can stop worrying now.”

“Who said I was worried?”

Belle just gave him a look, one that he knew that he was going to be seeing more of over the coming weeks. “It was written all over your face. But you did really well this weekend, and now you’re safe. Just the finale left to go.”

Gold didn’t want to make any comments that might remotely affect the outcome of next week’s competition in the eyes of luck, fate and justice, so he just smiled.

“I guess I’ll be seeing you next week,” Belle continued. “I always love these little visits to everyone’s houses. I can’t wait.”

Gold could, but he didn’t say that. There was something altogether nerve-wracking about the thought of Belle in his home. True, it was his place and he had control over it, but anticipating her reaction to the place he had lived in all his life wasn’t something he wanted to contemplate. He shook himself crossly. He was proud of his farm and always had been, and there was no reason to think that it was not good enough for Belle. He worked hard there, and he liked to think that it showed. As he gave himself this mental pep talk, a little spark of excitement began to ignite at the thought of Belle visiting the farm and seeing his life’s work for herself. Of course, meeting Aunt Elvira was another matter entirely, and the thought of locking her in a cupboard for the duration of the filming crew’s visit pushed its way to the front of his mind once more.

“I’m looking forward to it too.”

At that point Belle was accosted by one of the camera crew to do some final filming, and Gold was left alone with his thoughts. Regina and Emma were still talking to the presenters, and so he found himself gravitating towards Jefferson.

“Congratulations!” he exclaimed as Gold approached. “Once more unto the breach, dear friend.”

Gold just raised an eyebrow. “Right.”

“Well, you can’t deny it,” Jefferson said. “There really is just one more time to go.”

“I’m well aware of that, but I didn’t really need the Shakespeare to go with it.”

Jefferson just laughed. “In all seriousness, although seriousness is vastly overrated in my opinion, well done. This is pretty much the end now and you don’t need to worry about anything anymore. No matter what happens next week, you’re in the final and you’re not going home. Neither am I or Regina. We’re in it to the end, and the best person on the day will win.”

Gold nodded. “Time will tell.” It was a shame that Emma would not be there with them, but that was the nature of the competition, and he would see her on the Sunday anyway, along with all the other friends that he had made that he’d had to say goodbye to over the course of the production. The thought buoyed him up a little, and when he finally managed to get over to talk to Emma, it seemed that she was thinking along similar lines.

“I’m gutted, obviously,” she said. “I wanted to get through to the final just as much as anyone else, but I did my best, and I got this far, and it’s not like I’m not going to be coming back this time next week for the party anyway.” A sly smile spread over her face. “You know, in a way, this might be better, because I’ll be out there enjoying myself in the sunshine without a care in the world whilst the rest of you are in here having meltdowns over creating croquembouches or whatever sadistic sugarwork torture Granny and Belle have thought up for you this year.” Gold didn’t particularly want to think about the challenges that would face them the next week, knowing that the ultimate showstopper was going to be incredibly intricate and time-consuming and that he wouldn’t have anywhere near as much time to practice it as he would like. He pushed the thought to the back of his mind.

“I’ll miss you,” he said to Emma. “In the tent and in the breakroom. You’ve been the one to keep me sane for these past few weeks and I’ll probably have a nervous breakdown without you there next week.”

Emma chuckled. “You’ll be fine. At least I know that I won’t have to rescue you from Zelena.”

“Don’t be so sure. I’ve been half-convinced that she’s going to show up again ever since she left. I wouldn’t put it past her to try and crash the party and cause mayhem.”

“Well, in that case we shall keep her entertained outside the tent and you can get on with whatever it is that you’re doing in there, blissfully unaware of the carnage until you get out there with your masterworks and find a swarm of police vans and ambulances and me with Zelena in a headlock.”

“You’d have to fight my Aunt Elvira for headlocking rights,” Gold muttered. Whilst he had not gone into too many details when describing Zelena’s antics, her attempt to sabotage him during dessert week had had his aunt practically frothing at the mouth and swearing sweet and cold revenge on the woman.

“I’m looking forward to meeting your Aunt Elvira,” Emma said. “She sounds amazing.”

“A lot of people have said that. I’m really not so sure.”

“What, that she’s amazing?”

“No, I know that she’s amazing. I’m just not sure that everyone should be so enthusiastic about meeting her.”

“Are you embarrassed of your relatives, Gold?” Emma teased.

“Who isn’t?”

The production team were beginning to clear up around them and Gold knew that it was time to get going back to the farm; the journey between the filming location and his home never got any shorter or easier. He would have liked to have been able to exchange a few more words with Belle, but she was deep in conversation with Ella, and he would see her during the week when she came to the farm anyway. Part of him still couldn’t believe that it would be happening, and he was convinced that it was all a very good dream. Nevertheless, she caught his eye as he passed her to leave the tent, and her smile left him feeling warm all the way home.

X

Belle knew that she was an emotional person and she wore her heart on her sleeve, experiencing life to the full and enjoying every moment of it, but even she felt that she had not been quite as excited as she was now for a long time. Driving along the winding roads in the heart of Scotland’s countryside, she tapped her fingers against the steering wheel to try and get out some of the pent-up nervous energy before she met Rum in his natural environment. There was going to be something very different about this next meeting with him, because it would be the first time that she saw him in his own domain. All their previous interactions had been within the tent, and therefore by default it had been her place, and Rum had perhaps never been as fully relaxed with her as he would be in his own home. She had long since been looking forward to this day and to finding out what kind of hidden depths there might be, watching the farmer at work. After the tales that he’d told her of his family, she was looking forward to meeting Aunt Elvira and Bae almost as much as remeeting Rum. She glanced in her mirrors; the production team van was still trundling along behind her, although why she was leading the little convoy when she had just as little idea of where they were going as the rest of them was beyond her.

Belle wasn’t quite sure how many times they got lost on the way to Gold’s farm, and with there being so few people about, there weren’t all that many opportunities to ask for directions. Not that Walter in the crew van would have asked for directions anyway, being of the mindset that giving in and admitting that they were lost was a sign of weakness. Belle had pointed out to him on a couple of occasions that they were on a limited time schedule and at this rate they’d be lucky to get to the farm before midnight, but finally they were following a narrow, winding track with signs to Gold’s farm all along it. As they approached the squat farmhouse, Belle could see several white specks in the fields beyond, so she thought that they were definitely on the right track.

Someone was watching out of an upstairs window for their arrival as they parked up in the driveway; Belle caught the flicker of a curtain, and a few moments later, the front door was thrown wide open and a small, birdlike woman rushed outside to greet the newcomers. This must be Aunt Elvira. She was quite happily ushering all the crew into the house for tea and cake, much to Walter’s protests that they had to get on, but Belle could already tell that it was going to be a losing battle. She knew from her conversations with Rum that Aunt Elvira was not a character to be trifled with, and Walter glanced at her for help as she got out of her car.

Thankfully, Gold arrived on the scene at that moment, and whilst it wouldn’t be exactly right to say that he brought some calm and normality to the proceedings, he could certainly control his aunt slightly better than the camera crew could. The fact that he already looked completely mortified before they’d even started perhaps wouldn’t help matters, but Belle hoped that he’d calm down enough before they started filming. He smiled, and having extricated Walter from Aunt Elvira’s grip and told the crew to make themselves at home, he came over to her, two collie dogs trotting along by his heels.

“Welcome to Scotland,” he said. “You picked a good day to come, the weather’s never normally this nice.” The sun was climbing high in the sky, and Belle wondered if Walter would want to get some pretty landscape shots of the countryside before they left. Despite his embarrassment at his aunt’s antics, Gold was obviously much more relaxed here in his own home, and it made Belle happy to know that there was another side to him that was not as perpetually nervous as he was in the tent.

“It’s very nice to be here. Thank you for hosting us.” She looked down at the dogs, who were sniffing around her car tyres. “Am I allowed to pet them or are they...” she fumbled for the right phrase, “on duty?”

“No, you can pet them. They adore any and all attention. I wouldn’t be surprised if they ended up being the stars of whatever gets filmed today. This is Chip, and Imp. They’re both girls.”

Belle bent down, offering her hands to the dogs to sniff. Chip was a classic brown and white, whilst Imp had patches of grey, with big pale blue eyes giving her a very sombre air. She was still giving them ear scratches as Walter came over, having finally managed to turn down the many offers of refreshments.

“We’re just going to get the equipment set up and then we’re ready whenever you are,” he said. “The light should be perfect for outdoor shots in about an hour.”

Belle nodded, and turned back to Gold as the crew began unloading the van and setting up. “So, we’ve got an hour to kill,” she said. “I think it would probably be a good idea to go over what we’re actually going to do today so that we don’t catch you off guard. This is meant to be you at your most relaxed, not worrying about baking in the competition and we don’t want to scare you off too much.”

Gold gave a huff of laughter. “If there are cameras anywhere about, then I’m not going to be at my most relaxed,” he said pointedly. “But as long as there aren’t any time limits and you’re not going to be judging whatever I end up making, then it should be a far cry from the tent. So, what is the plan?”

“Well, Walter will want to get his outside establishing shots first while the light’s still good, and then we’ll move inside to see you baking in your home kitchen. And interview Bae and Aunt Elvira.”

“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” Gold said. “I mean, Bae’s at school so you can’t really interview him, which just leaves Aunt Elvira, and well, you’ve seen her.”

In a classic example of speaking of the devil, Aunt Elvira came back out of the house carrying a large tray laden down with a teapot, several cups, and a huge pile of buttered scones. Despite their protests at not requiring any refreshments earlier, the camera crew took a sudden interest in the tray, leaving Aunt Elvira free to come over to Belle and Gold. Gold groaned.

“I was honestly hoping that she wouldn’t have noticed you were here,” he muttered.

“She knew I was coming.” Belle had to suppress a little smile. “I don’t think there was any way you could have hidden me.”

“You never know. I can be extremely crafty when I need to be, especially concerning Aunt Elvira.”

The thought of Gold being crafty was so completely out of character for his usual mild-mannered self that Belle burst out laughing just as Elvira reached them with the depleted tray.

“I’m not going to ask,” the older woman said. “You must be Belle. It’s so nice to meet you. Rum’s told us all about you, and you’re every bit as lovely in real life as you are on the TV. And you’re nowhere near as short as everyone makes you out to be.”

Gold sighed. “Aunt Elvira, if that was meant to be a compliment then I think you failed miserably.”

“No, no, it’s all right. I’ll take it as a compliment,” Belle said. “It’s very nice to meet you too, Elvira. Rum’s told me a lot about you, too.”

Aunt Elvira’s eyes shifted between Gold and Belle and she grinned conspiratorially. “I like her,” she said to Gold, her tone heavy with implication. “You want to keep her around for as long as possible.”

“Aunt Elvira!”

“I won’t always be here to give you advice, Errant Nephew. I guess I’ll leave you two to discuss whatever important baking things that you’re talking about.” She gave Gold an extremely obvious wink as she left, and he buried his face in his hands.

“I apologise profusely,” he said, muffled.

“At least you can’t say she’s not direct about it,” Belle mused, and she patted Gold’s shoulder. “Come on, it’ll all come right in the wash. From what you’ve told me about her, that seemed remarkably benign.”

“I think she was attempting to be polite.” Gold finally looked up at her again. “Well, there’s no use in just standing around out here whilst the crew get set up. Would you like a tour of the farm?”

Belle nodded eagerly. “I would love that. I even wore wellies just in case you offered.” Of course, her wellies were bright pink, but they were still better than her usual footwear. As attached as she was to her stilettos, much to Granny’s chagrin, she had to accept that they were really not practical for today’s adventure. Gold offered her his arm as they walked away from the car, the dogs at his heels, and Belle took it, venturing to lean into his side a little. When he made no comment, she smiled to herself. Soon, very soon.

They made meaningless small talk as they meandered down into the farm proper, talking about the show and what Belle had been making for the masterclasses this week, what kind of thing she would be doing after filming finished, but soon they lapsed into a companionable silence. It was one that they had shared a few times over the course of the series, with no need to say anything, just enjoying one another’s company. Belle noticed that Gold was walking with a shepherd’s crook rather than the usual cane that was found hooked over his workbench, and he seemed to move so much more naturally and easily with it. He was at home here in the fields, there was no other way to describe it. On their way down to the barns they met Mr Dove, Gold’s loyal farmhand, who despite his giant and rather scary physique, turned out to be as sweet and affable an acquaintance as Belle could hope for, and she could well see why he was a necessary ally in Gold’s life with his exuberant aunt. He pointed out the sheep in the fields as Gold explained how much of the land belonged to the farm, and for a long while, all Belle could do was take in the sheer, raw beauty of the countryside.

Finally they made their way around to the barns where the sheep and feed were kept. The sweet smell of hay was strong in entrance to the dimly-lit barn, and out of view of cameramen and well-meaning farmhands – not that she suspected that Dove would say anything to anyone – she found Gold’s free hand and squeezed. He glanced over at her, returning the pressure, and Belle licked her lips. She knew that she really shouldn’t want any more than this, that she only had to wait another few days and then they could make this official properly, but there was something about the atmosphere that made her want to throw caution to the wind. At her feet, Chip gave a soft little yip, almost as if to encourage her.

“What are you thinking?” Gold asked softly.

“Cheesy romance novels,” Belle admitted. “Especially the historical romances. The hero and heroine meeting for illicit trysts in haylofts. The milkmaid and the stable hand, or something like that.”

Gold chuckled, but there was nothing mocking in it.

“Well, I don’t think that the dogs are going to tell on us,” he said. The two collies were looking up at them expectantly, tails wagging.

“Are you sure?”

“They’re very intelligent but speech is still beyond them.”

“Not the dogs.” Belle paused. “This. Us.”

Gold nodded. “If there’s one thing that this competition has taught me, it’s that sometimes there’s a lot to be gained from throwing caution to the wind once in a while.”

Belle smiled, and for a moment cursed the fact that she was wearing sensible shoes before going up on her tiptoes to steal a kiss. Gold’s lips were warm and eager against hers, and Belle could feel the rough scrape of stubble beginning to come through as she touched his cheek. It was a chaste kiss, a nervous first kiss, but it still seemed to have gone on for far longer than it actually had once she broke away. There was something bright in Gold’s eyes that she had not seen there before, and she knew that she was probably wearing the same slightly dumbfounded expression.

“We should probably get back to the house before Walter comes looking for us,” she said, however much she wanted to stay here in the dark barn, kissing Gold. He nodded his agreement and they stepped out into the sunshine again.

It really was an absolutely beautiful day.

====

Next time: Belle has fun with Aunt Elvira as her trip to the farm continues, Gold has fun with meringues as the bakers face their final challenges, and the winner is revealed...

==== Hazelnut Mocha cream horns recipe here 

Double chocolate entremets recipe here 

[topicprinter]

TL;DR: Self storage is a tough business with so many potential deal breakers. Had a smash hit and now have went through 3 properties and none of them have worked out including the most recent project falling apart at the last possible moment with the last possible deal breaker....I rarely dive into my my own business here but I have a story and a lesson worth sharing. I’m always learning and failing and getting back up and pressing onward.I got some bad news this week. A self storage development project that I had been working on for 24 months is dead.Let’s start from the beginning. My partner and I got involved in self storage with our first construction project in Ithaca NY in 2016.We raised cash from outside investors for 25% and got a bank loan for our 75% ownership. We located the site, permitted the project, built the facility from the ground up and operate it today.The project has been a huge success. We spent $2.5MM to build it. We operate it extremely lean with remote management. We’re now about 60% occupied and we are cashflow positive and paying our investors back a healthy return on their initial investment.We also had an offer on the table from a national player to purchase our facility for $4.2MM a few months after we opened the doors for operation. My partner and I could have taken about $600k each off the table but we declined the offer and decided to continue to lease up the facility and explore selling it down the road when its full and worth more or simply continue to operate it and enjoy the depreciation, appreciation and cash flows.A few months after we opened the first facility for business in 2017 I went full time into self storage with the goal of getting another project in the works as soon as possible. My partner took over the service business with the help of a new management hire.We picked a market we loved and got a parcel of land under purchase contract. The property needed a zoning variance to change from a business district to an industrial district. Even though self storage is a “business to consumer” retail-type business it is grouped in with other industrial uses like commercial warehousing and distribution centers.We began spending money on civil engineering, permits, renderings, surveys and more. I attended 8 town hearings over 9 months. The local self storage owners showed up to the town meetings in force. They didn’t want the competition so they argued against the zoning variance. One competitor even hired an attorney to stand up and fight my project in front of the town. All in all we spent about $25k on the project before finally getting turned down by the town. We failed and moved on.In March of 2018 we picked a different city and got a new parcel under purchase contract. This one was zoned correctly as an industrial site. It was wedged between a gas station and a highway. We began spending money on engineering, permits, renderings, surveys etc. I attended about 4 town meetings over 6 months before the town made it clear they didn’t like that use and decided to change the zoning altogether while I was in the process of trying to get approval. I had spent 6 months working on the deal and another $15k or so when they finally turned me down and changed the zoning. It was a heartbreaker. Back to square one again.So in November of 2018 we got a third site under option in the same town as the previous site. It was zoned correctly, in a great high-traffic location and we negotiated a great price. In talking with the town the planning board members loved my use and were excited about my project. Finally some support!We moved quickly and began the surveys and engineering. The site was near and old indian burial ground next to the mohawk river so they required an archeological survey before we could do anything on the site. They wouldn’t even let us dig test holes to check soil types before the survey was completed. In the dead of winter with several feet of snow and the top 40 inches of soil we couldn’t complete the survey so we had to wait until April.So I had a decision to make. Hold up the entire project until April or take a chance on the archeological survey coming back clean and the test holes revealing what the soil maps told us they would reveal. I chose to get the project moving forward.I spent this previous winter assembling my investment team, working with my local bank and getting the project use approved with the town. Everything went great. The investors were eager to join after the success at our first project. The bank was eager to lend because my partner and I had a few very good years and had some cash on hand. The town also loved our use.So I began spending money on engineering and environmental surveys. We ordered the appraisal through the bank and I met with the board at my bank pushing towards loan approval. I engaged my civil engineer to compete the stormwater plan so we could get site plan approval with the town.Business is weird because it all happens very slowly for a long time and it all comes together very quickly. Over the past two weeks things begin to finally come together.On Monday April 15th 2019 I flew up, presented in front of the town board and public and we got site plan approval. There were several conditions of approval but they were all minor. We had to have an acceptable stormwater management plan and make a slight change to one of our driveways. This was a huge win because it was the step that killed our two previous deals.Two days later on April 17th we finally received word that the archeological survey came back clean. No Indian remains or artifacts on site. Great news.A day later on April 18th our loan was approved with the bank. Our appraisal had come back strong and the board approved us for the construction loan based on the budget I had built out. Great news and another huge hurdle cleared.On April 19th all partners had reached agreement on the company operating agreement and it was distributed and signed by all of our partners. We scheduled the capital call for May 1st. Another huge hurdle cleared.The last step was the test pits and soil tests. We had to make sure the ground was stable and our stormwater management plan could work on the site.Stormwater management is a lot more complicated than people think. When you build a construction project you have to make the finished site plan drain and filter water at the same rates as before you did anything. This way if there is a big rain it won’t flood the local properties or roads. So if you put 100,000 square feet of pavement and buildings on a site that is a lot of water run off that previously was absorbed by green space.The quality of the soil makes a big difference. Some soil, like sandy soil, drains and filters water very quickly and makes a stormwater plan a lot easier. Other soil like silt or organic matter doesn’t drain water very quickly at all. Either way a plan is usually feasible and can be made to work with stormwater structures like swells, retention ponds or underground water storage pipes in extreme cases.So on Friday April 19th, with the archeological survey results in hand, we were finally able to dig our test holes on site.What we found was a heartbreaker. Starting about 1 foot below grade and extending to about 5 foot below grade there was wood debris, bricks, concrete blocks, trash and more all in a rotting organic black sludge. It didn’t drain or filter water at all. What’s more is that this fill would make it virtually impossible to build proper building slabs that could hold up our storage buildings.It turns out many years ago the property was used as a dumping ground for unwanted fill from all around town. Anytime anyone tore down a building the property owner would let them dump it on site and they would bury it. Anytime anyone had “fill” as extra dirt is called in the construction industry, they would bring it to this site and dump it. The owner thought this would increase the property value because the property got flatter and more consistent as they worked it around.This fill would take hundreds of dump truck loads to remove and we’d have nowhere to take it. Plus it would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to do this.Our project is dead weeks before we were planning to break ground and begin construction. We are out the $30,000 in costs we accumulated preparing for construction with our surveys and engineering.This is a major heartbreaker for me. I’ve spent 2 years trying to get a second project in the works and have failed 3 times. We’ve not only lost 2 years of my productivity but also nearly $100,000 in expenses associated with the three projects.Yesterday I called everyone on my investment team and let them know that we would not be able to put their investment to use for another 6-8 months at the earliest. They were disappointed and a few told me they wouldn’t be able to commit to that new timeline.I learned an important lesson on this project. Get the deal breakers out of the way as soon as possible. Spend as little money and time as possible working to get these deal breakers out of the way.With construction there are a lot of deal breakers and not all of them are possible to get out of the way early. We couldn’t dig in the winter for example. The appraisal could have came back low and we could have been declined on the loan amount. It could have been an indian campsite and artifacts could have been uncovered. The town could have changed the zoning. A neighbor could have showed up and voiced his or her displeasure until the town gave in. A competitor could have hired a high powered attorney to fight our project. The list goes on.It’s the cost of doing business. There are ups and downs in business. You have to take risks in the form of time and money to make great (and profitable) things happen. I’m not as upset about the $100k. The next successful project will make that back 10 or 20 times over. Self storage projects are so profitable because they are so darn hard to get permitted and get built. They take 4 years from concept to cashflow. It’s a long long game that most people aren’t willing to play.The time is what really breaks my heart. I’ve spent 2 full years working to get a project approved and now I have absolutely nothing to show for it. My partner is sacrificing in a big way by managing our big and stressful service business on his own so I can pursue these opportunities for us. I feel like I let him down.So what can I take away from this?Number one I think we are going to get a few projects in the pipeline from here on out. Most developers do this. They have 6 projects in the pipeline because they know that 3 of the deals will die and the other 3 will be delayed and take twice as long as scheduled.But what happens if all three go quickly and work out? We’ll need some more involved investors or to take on a larger partner. We’ve explored those routes and we think its time to get more serious. We can’t risk wasting another 8 months on a project that doesn’t come to fruition.Ray Dalio has an analogy in his book “Principles of life and work” that is applicable here.“Imagine that in order to have a great life you have to cross a dangerous jungle. You can stay safe where you are and have an ordinary life, or you can risk crossing the jungle to have a terrific life. How would you approach that choice?” - Ray DalioHe talks about the lizard brain and that its hard wired for us to fear uncomfortable and dangerous situations in order to keep us alive and safe.But what is really the danger? What are we risking?Not death. Not hunger. Not social rejection or humiliation. We have safety nets here.We’re risking time and money. We can always make the money back and if we do it right the costs of failing aren’t going to cripple us.The worst case scenario just happened for the third time in a row and where do I sit? My family still gets fed. I can still make my mortgage payment. I’m still safe from physical danger. I can’t let my emotions get the best of me and make radical decisions right now. I have to trust the process and keep a level head.It’s all part of entrepreneurship. Onward and upward!

[ronaldmrashid]

Being Thankful For All That’s Good And Lucky In This World

Happy Thanksgiving!

Despite giving up all my portfolio gains for the year and then some, I’m thankful for the incredible recovery we’ve had since 2009. Without the bull run, I wouldn’t have been able to stay unemployed since 2012. The value of money comes nowhere near the value of time.

It’s sad the good times are going away. For so long, it’s been so easy to make easy money. Unless you’re Juggernaut, it’s probably not a good idea to step in front of a bus. The stock market is clearly telegraphing a slowdown in corporate earnings, and the economy by extension. The housing sector usually takes several years to work its way through a funk.

The Fed has also made it clear it will continue to raise rates, no matter how much carnage there is in the short term. You would think they’d slow down their pace of rate increases in 2019, but I wouldn’t count on them being rational. With the yield curve resuming its flattening as investors find safety in longer duration treasuries, we need to seriously be careful about how much risk exposure we really want to take. Flat or inverted yield curves have seldom ever signified good news for the economy. Build your CD step stool folks.

Enough of being a measured voice through times of volatility.

During this Thanksgiving holiday, I wanted to share one extremely lucky event that occurred in my life. During times of difficulty, it’s always good to reflect and be grateful for what we have. I hope you will use the holidays to reflect on some of your fortunate events as well and share. 

The Secret Phone Call

The year is 2001 and the Nasdaq, down 50%, just celebrated its one year anniversary of hitting its peak. I’m finishing up the second year of my analyst program, paranoid that I won’t be getting the invite back for my third year.

I always knew my chances for getting a third-year analyst role were slim-to-none since only superstars get to continue. But I kept the faith, much like cryptocurrency investors have erroneously kept the faith all year. I was truly a subpar performer who didn’t belong at the best investment bank in the world at the time.

I dressed poorly because I didn’t know better as a public school kid who never had to dress up. Once, my VP barked at me, “Get that dog collar off your neck!” referencing a Hawaiian shell necklace my girlfriend had given me. I guess there is a benefit of going to an expensive prep school after all.

I annoyed people. Another time, as I was humming something indistinguishable while reading some research material, an MD on the Latin America sales desk told me to keep quiet. She was the same MD I had had to get permission from to buy an MCI Worldcom call option, which had quickly gone to zero after purchase. I’m sure she thought I was an idiot.

There was a reason why I had to go through 7 rounds and 55 interviews to get my job. No desk wanted me. I was an outsider who was forced into their vaunted club by an African-American recruiter named Kim Purkiss who never gave up on me. I owe her so much.

As a junior analyst on the sales trading floor, one of my jobs was to pick up and screen phone calls for all our senior colleagues. Our desks were arranged in I-formation, with my boss sitting at one base of the I and me sitting on the side. His face was always obscured by a couple Bloomberg trading monitors. We communicated by shouting.

At 9am, my boss’s phone rang and I hit his button on my large 20 line turret as quick as lightning. The trading floor was buzzing with activity in anticipation of the market open at 9:30am.

“Hello, can I speak to Tom, please? It’s Jim,” said the man on the other end. Jim was calling from Hong Kong, where it was 10pm. Jim was the Head of the Asian Equities business at the time. He was the big, big boss.

“Hi Jim! It’s Sam. Nice to hear from you. It’s late there. Hope all is well. Let me see if Tom is available. One sec.” I blurted out like a middle school boy trying to talk to a girl for the first time.

I zoomed in between Tom’s monitors and saw he was staring at his screen while pounding away at his keyboard.

“Tom! Jim is on line one!” I yelled as the buzz on the 49th floor of 1 New York Plaza started to crescendo.

The confusing phone turret we used

Tom didn’t acknowledge my call, but he picked up the line by saying “hello.” Not wanting to hang up on big bossman Jim in the middle of the night in Hong Kong, I stayed on to ensure they connected. In the past, I had sometimes accidentally hung up on the caller before a teammate hopped on. Our phone turrets were confusing as hell.

Jim immediately blurted out after Tom said hello, “I need to talk to you about Sam. We need to make a decision on whether to keep him or not.”

My ears perked up! Ethically, I should have hung up. But out of sheer curiosity and survival, I pressed mute instead. My future depended on it.

“Jim, it sounds like we have position open in Taiwan? But I don’t think Sam would be a good fit, despite his Mandarin skills. He’s unfocused because he’s always trading stocks while at work.”

Oh crap! I knew all my trading would come back to haunt me. I was already given a talk a couple times before about how I was spending too much time trading stocks, and not enough time focusing on my job. It would have been a dream come true to move to Taiwan to work.

“OK Tom, we’ll look elsewhere to fill these open positions. Guess that’s it for Sam. Goodnight.”

My heart sank. My boss didn’t like me and I knew my days were numbered. It was mid-April, 2001.

The Second Phone Call

Knowing my last day for employment would be sometime in June was depressing, like I was waiting for the electric chair. Plenty of people I knew were getting laid off and I was starting to panic mentally. Tom hadn’t explicitly told me I wouldn’t be asked back, but I wasn’t going to wait to see if he did.

Then another phone call came one early May afternoon. This time, there was no need for me to pick it up because the VP sitting next to me did.

During my job interview process, Elaine had been my harshest interviewer. A graduate of Barnard College and The Wharton School of Business for an MBA, she was a strong, single, 40-year-old woman you did not want to mess with. Just when I thought I had gotten the job, she requested to interview me a second time over coffee and asked more grilling questions.

After about a minute of conversation, Elaine said while on the phone, “I think you might want to speak to my colleague here.” She turned to me, told me to pick up the phone and have a chat.

I was confused, but I did as I was told. On the line was a guy named Michael. He had a nervous stutter.

“Hi there. Your colleague said you might be interested in working for a competitor covering west coast clients in San Francisco. Are you interested?” Michael said.

Are you kidding me? Hell yeah, I’m interested! I thought to myself. But I didn’t tell him that. Instead, I responded calmly, “I’m not sure Michael. I’m in a really good spot here. The offer would have to be extremely compelling for me to leave.”

“Sure, I understand. Let’s talk more in private when you’re off the desk about what it would take to make you move.” Michael responded.

I was thrilled! I turned to Elaine after I had hung up and told her thank you. She was looking out for me because she also knew my days were numbered.

The Offer Package

I took a day off in order to fly out to San Francisco and meet the team on a Friday. They were a great group of fellas and I especially liked the guy I was going to work directly under. He was intelligent, hardworking, and loved to enjoy life. At Berkeley, where he went to undergrad, he was the Bud Light rep on campus. Everybody loved hanging out with him.

One thing led to another and the new firm offered me everything I had asked for:

* An Associate title, reserved for those who had gone to business school or those who continued to be superstars after their third year as an analyst.

* A pay base salary pay raise to $85,000 from $55,000.

* A guaranteed bonus of $50,000 for the year, even though there would be only six months left if I joined.

* Subsidized housing for two months and $6,000 for relocation expenses

I went from being out on the streets in a month to getting a raise and a promotion in a new city with a new firm. This series of events was absolutely one of the luckiest turnarounds of my life.

For the next seven years, my boss and I competed against my old firm and often won. When my boss decided to leave to a large client, I ended up running the business and hiring a couple people to work for me for the next four years. Of course, since we had such a good relationship, I became a top 3 relationship as well.

It was a fantastic ride that culminated with me engineering my layoff at 2012 and preparing my junior colleague to take over. It was his time.

Embrace All That Is Lucky In This World

It’s easy to get down on ourselves. I’m my worst critic by far. But sometimes, we’ve got to look back and appreciate all the good that has happened to us. Let’s not take our good fortune for granted.

Being able to write about my time earning only $40,000 a year in Manhattan as a first-year analyst is a blessing. It reminded me of this lucky memory that had so long been shelved away. I feel lucky to have been able to write this article before this memory permanently faded away. I’m telling you, writing will keep you young.

It’s painful to lose money in the stock market and real estate market. It’s terrible to lose a job you had no intention of leaving. Let us accept that bad things will happen all the time. And when they do, let us not forget all the good luck we received that got us to where we are today.

Related:

The Best Financial Move I Made Is Something Everyone Can Do

Here’s When You’ll Finally Feel So Rich

Perpetual Failure: The Reason Why I Continue To Save So Much

Readers, what are you thankful for this holiday season? Please share a lucky break that you may have forgotten or taken for granted until now. 

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