Coronavirus: Baker helping to raise tremendous amount of dough for those fighting pandemic

A home baker in Co Armagh is helping to feed his community and at the same time kitting out NHS workers with the PPE necessary to help in the fight against Covid-19.

Calling himself The Quarantine Baker, Clarke Halliday gets up at 5am every morning to start baking, using an oven that fits just five loaves at a time.

Between 10am and 4pm each day he puts his baked goods out on a table in front of his house in Carrick Drive in Lurgan and asks people to leave money in an honesty jar to pay for the goods.

All proceeds go towards PPE for NHS workers and making sure older people in his community have enough to eat.

Of the thinking behind the charitable home enterprise the 36-year-old said: “I’ve been watching Covid from December, I was watching it come out of China before Italy really knew about it, before we knew about it.

“I was locked in through the internet, I was really quite concerned at an early stage before our media were really talking about it. My girlfriend Holly was bouncing off the walls with the things I was telling her. I knew this was going to come here.

“My mother (Esther) has been a midwife in Craigavon Area Hospital her entire career and my sister (Naomi) also works in the NHS as a ward sister in Belfast Royal Hospital for Sick Children.

“I thought, I’m not going to sit here idly while my mum and sister go to war with an enemy they can’t see.”

Clarke left Lurgan when he was 27, returning just a year ago: “I did private yachts in the Med for a couple of years. I was PA for a billionaire in Saint-Tropez. I did a bit of travel through Australia and Asia. More recently I was cocktail bartender on a cruise ship.”

Clarke had been a baker by trade in his youth: “My uncle owned the Bread Basket in Queen Street. I started in there when I was 13 and worked there all the way through until I was 21. I hadn’t baked for about 15 years until now.”

He said his current location helped him come up the idea of baking for the community: “My house is on a cut through to Lurgan Park. When lockdown was called with the amount of people passing to get to the park, I thought I can do something here.

“I got on to my suppliers – Finlay’s, Ballyrashane, Mourne Eggs. When they heard the idea all they said was, ‘how much do you want?’

“With the help of local businesses I have cold storage, stainless steel tables and a hotplate.

“The first Saturday morning I opened the door and I was like ‘Oh my goodness’. I didn’t have my gas hotplate then, I only had my electric one.

“That day was a wing and prayer but it went off without a hitch. It came down to getting up early and having everything prepared.”

He added: “I do all the baking. I’m up at five in the morning putting my first batch of loaves in the oven, I can only do five at a time. On a Saturday I can do 40 or 50 loaves in a day.

“By 10 o’clock I’ve got about 20 wheaten loaves sitting and the table is open with all the rest of my bread.”

Clarke encouraged people in Lurgan to let older people in the area know about his baked goods which he would make available to them free of charge.

He said: “I would encourage people to visit an OAP living near to them ask them if they need anything and I’ll put them together a wee parcel, I won’t take a charge off them.

“On a Sunday I would bake extra bread and walk a different direction every week and drop it off maybe at a dozen houses.”

He explained how his signage supplier opened up a door for how he could spend the money he raised: “Geoprint came on board with my signage. I didn’t know Jason (Taylor) until I started doing this. When I went to pick up the signage he told me he was 3D printing visors to NHS specifications.

“At this stage I didn’t know if people were going to buy into it, how much money was going to come in.”

By the end of the first week Clarke had accumulated £1,000 and contacted Jason to say he could provide the funds to print PPE.

He said: “I’ve been sourcing gloves, aprons and hand sanitiser too. Moving forward we’re going to try and do a hospital and a residential home alternating every week, giving them a package of visors and other PPE. We have eight printing machines doing 10 prints a day so we can make 80 visors a day. Potentially in 10 days we can do one hospital and one nursing home. That’s what we’re aiming for.

“I’m very conscious that I’m sitting on a lot of money.”

Clarke’s fundraising passed the £4,000 mark last week: “I want the money gone. That’s why I’m trying to work out how it can best be spent.”

Of the future of The Quarantine Baker he said: “The baker won’t exist after Covid, it’s just a way of raising funds. He will commit to the duration of the lockdown, I’ll be here, I’ll be continuing to raise money for PPE.”

Of the coronavirus pandemic, he said: “The plus side of this whole Covid thing is people are sitting back and realising that there is more to life than the daily nine to five grind.

“It’s a community, we’re trying to give people the opportunity to step back and forget about it and walk away with a smile holding a warm loaf of bread, that to me is just everything.”

Before Clarke Halliday became The Quarantine Baker he has been cooking for his neighbours, though his generosity wasn’t always accepted.

The former Lurgan Junior High and Craigavon Senior High pupil said: “Before I opened the bakery I was cooking for my neighbours. They were giving off at me, saying they didn’t need it. I said look just take it.

“I have experienced so much generosity from strangers on my travels. I want to give something back.”

Clarke, who most recently was working on a Seabourn cruise liner, said: “Any time I would come back from my travels I would have stayed with my mum. One thing I learned through my travels, I’m very grateful and thankful that I have somewhere to call home and I have a family back home.

“There are a lot of people and a lot of cultures that I met when I was away they didn’t have anything.

“I think that’s where this contribution to the community is coming from. I know how hard it can be.”

He added: “Through my last cruise with Seabourn I made three ports of call in India. Bangalore, Mumbai and Cochin. I had breakfast in the slums of Mumbai and lunch in the Taj by India Gate.

“It’s one extreme to the other. In the slums there was no lights. I asked for a toilet and there was no toilet. There was no handwashing facilities or anything.

“We sat down and ordered our food, the staff are running about in a kitchen using a mobile phone for a light in one hand and a saucepan in the other.

“This young lad came to the table and served the food using his hand as a ladle.

“It was scary, surreal, but it tasted good and I didn’t get the runs.”

Clarke explained how he became a PA to billionaire in Saint-Tropez: “When I was doing my first year on the yachts in the Riviera that was the year of the economic crisis.

“The billionaires didn’t know what they were doing with their money, or their boats. Normally they’d buy a boat one year and sell it the next. Your crew would jump from ship to ship each season. Because of the crisis no boats were being bought or sold.

“I was in a crew house in Mantives and I got an email regarding a vacancy for a live-in butler.

“I took the bus across the Riviera to Saint-Tropez, a wee townland called Ramatuelle. Whenever I rocked up into the village I thought I was going for an interview but it turned out I already had the job. My first task was to cater for 12 people one of whom was a Chanel model.

“The role progressed to chauffeur, parties, cooking, cocktail services, errands. It was a whirlwind.

“I almost ended up in Ibiza with Leonardo Di Caprio and Paris Hilton but the boss left us sitting when he flew off in a helicopter. We ended up with the villa to ourselves that weekend.”