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I am writing this blog post from the comfort of an Amtrak express train, hurtling from Washington DC to New York. For those of you who have not run into me over the last two weeks in Cape Town, looking harried and panicked like a chicken with its head cut off, I have skipped the country to attend the wedding of one of my best friends in Washington DC. As with most once-in-a-lifetime events you really want to attend, this wedding comes at a professionally fraught time when I really, really shouldn’t be leaving The Creamery (let alone the country) for seven days. Our second churn has just arrived from Europe, we have just signed a lease with the new V&A Market on The Wharf to start scooping ice cream five days a week from 1 December onwards (more on that later), and we are, as I type, on Day Two of Seven, scooping at Kamersvol Geskenke in Somerset West. So. As I said, not particularly good timing.

But my generous staff have sent me away anyway, not only to the wedding, but to two days in New York to visit my sister, while they hold the fort in my absence. So far there have been a lot of transatlantic emails, a couple SMSes, and one phone call, and everything seems to be going to my detailed, bullet-pointed Seven Day Plan. I never thought I would be able to leave The Creamery, my baby, in its first year, so I swing between feeling vaguely guilty, immensely grateful to my staff, on occasion panicky (waking up at 4am in a DC hotel room convinced I’d missed the Neighbourgoods shift), pretty jetlagged and generally spoilt to be back in a country I’m pretty fond of, with friends and family I adore.

I’m also going to pretend that this is a work-related research trip, so I will be sharing some of my ice cream experiences here on the blog. So many of the ice cream companies we admire and get inspiration from are US-based, so I’ve planned some pretty circuitous itineraries to include as many frozen treats as possible.

So, if you’re one of our customers in Cape Town, it will be business as usual for the next week, and we do hope you’ll visit us for your weekly ice cream at Neighbourgoods, Earthfair St George’s, and Starlings Urban Farmers Market, or come grab a scoop at Kamersvol Geskenke if you are craftily inclined (we’re in the deli section at the top). Be sure to tell our staff that you think they are doing fabulously without Kate, and that they are probably better off without me anyway.

And check in here on the blog over the course of the week, pictures and reports from your guilty correspondent abroad will follow.