Christmas comes closer - the first day of the Slow Food Fair
The frenzy begins and Jude nearly freezes solid at the First day of the Slow Food Fair.
The frenzy begins and Jude nearly freezes solid at the First day of the Slow Food Fair. I competely blame Tom. This June, we very foolishly took a very expensive stall at the Taste of London Festival. This was foolish as we soon discovered that, despite what we had been told, huge wine brands were giving away pink coloured paint stripper (otherwise marketed as Mateus Rose) while large high street chains made a great show of free educational tastings using mass produced rubbish as examples of wine. We were clearly the hippies on the block and completely out of place. 90% of the people who visited our stall only wanted free stuff , most did not even bother to stop and it poured with rain pretty continuously. By the last day, we could no longer muster any sort of enthusiasm for the enterprise and so packed up early and fled, licking our expensive financial wounds. Our tiny stall had cost a fortune and we had not even come close to breaking even.
On the second day, I had turned to Tom after yet another group had wondered past us, clutching their radioactively cerise tumblers, and had told him that in the future, if Jude and I ever mentioned doing a stall at any sort of fair or festival, he was to slap us very hard.
As if the intervening months have not been bad enough (unbelievably, Jude and I were both fielding calls about trying to sort the drains out at Taste in June. JUNE.), my husband and I enthusiastically agreed to do a stall at The Slow Food Christmas Fair this weekend, the busiest of the whole year in retail. To be fair to us, this was not at all expensive and while we were always slightly dubious about the whole Taste of London thing ( a complete con if you ask me, having seen it at very close quarters), at least we whole heartedly support the values of the Slow Food movement.
Last night, we had to wait at Lordship Lane for the small van we have hired to turn up which it did not do until 1.30am. We then had to load it up with all the beautifully biodynamic wines we had carefully selected before driving it home. We finally got to bed at about 3am and had to get up again at 7.30am to be at the Fair in good time. None of this makes for two happy people. The fair is down at the South Bank Centre and at least the drive was a complete pleasure as for a change, we were in a car that had a heater. This is the most unbelievable luxury and I really don’t know how I am going to manage to go back to my car when this utterly fabulous little vehicle goes back on Sunday night. That little piece of total heaven was short lived as pretty much as soon as we arrived, we started to have doubts. The still fresh memory of Taste and of setting up a stall in the open air come flooding back and just to add an extra edge, the temperatures this morning (and indeed all day) were really and truly artic.
I got Jude all set up and had to race off to get to the day job where I spent a day worrying about him. He still has a dreadful cold and the very last place on the planet that you want to be with a bad cold is outside in sub zero temperatures, trying to sell very special, beautifully crafted wines to people who want free stuff. For although apparently the crowd today was better than it had been at Taste, many were still not really interested. They wanted English wine and they wanted to pay no more than £5 a bottle. It did not help that the temperatures meant that the samples got so cold, they froze both tongue and teeth on contact, sending several potential customers shrieking over to the fresh peppermint tea stall to recover. Apparently, biodynamic, sulphur free wine slush puppy is not delicious. Being so cold makes it very difficult to have a conversation about the merits of these wines and how they are made and why they are so special which means that really, this is not a place for Green & Blue. How on earth did we end up here again? Oh yes – Tom forgot to slap us.
Raced over to Lordship Lane late afternoon where there was an olive oil crisis which I think we have sorted (thank you VERY much lovely Liberty Wines) and spoke to some of our favourite regulars who were very cheering. Our landlord came in with a group of his agents for their Christmas drinks and it is only because Jude made me promise that I wouldn’t that I did not ask him to leave using complicated, colourful language. Given the situations with the drains both him and those that shall remain nameless remain on the blackest of black lists. So I said nothing but the temperature in the shop plummeted instantly down to Slow Food Fair Stall levels when he walked in. Then off to do two deliveries and pick up my poor popsicle of a spouse. Home at an incredibly respectable hour compared to the norm at the moment but it all starts again early tomorrow so best to try to get some sleep.
I will be on the stall tomorrow morning and given my extreme sensitivity to piercing, rapier-like cold, expect to be in a great deal of psychological and physical pain for most of it. We are trying to think positively about it – we did sell some wine today and the next three should be considerably busier. Christmas craziness has well and truly started in both sites, so we have sales in those two to hopefully cheer us up. After the last few months we really need these, so fingers crossed. We will be opening some incredible wines in both sites (to be tasted in the right conditions) and have all our fine and rare wines out on display -Ridge Montebello, Vega Sicilia Unico and magnums of Leflaive Puligny-Montrachet among others- in Lordship Lane, so all we need now are hordes of people, not after English wine for a fiver, who want something really special for Christmas.
On the second day, I had turned to Tom after yet another group had wondered past us, clutching their radioactively cerise tumblers, and had told him that in the future, if Jude and I ever mentioned doing a stall at any sort of fair or festival, he was to slap us very hard.
As if the intervening months have not been bad enough (unbelievably, Jude and I were both fielding calls about trying to sort the drains out at Taste in June. JUNE.), my husband and I enthusiastically agreed to do a stall at The Slow Food Christmas Fair this weekend, the busiest of the whole year in retail. To be fair to us, this was not at all expensive and while we were always slightly dubious about the whole Taste of London thing ( a complete con if you ask me, having seen it at very close quarters), at least we whole heartedly support the values of the Slow Food movement.
Last night, we had to wait at Lordship Lane for the small van we have hired to turn up which it did not do until 1.30am. We then had to load it up with all the beautifully biodynamic wines we had carefully selected before driving it home. We finally got to bed at about 3am and had to get up again at 7.30am to be at the Fair in good time. None of this makes for two happy people. The fair is down at the South Bank Centre and at least the drive was a complete pleasure as for a change, we were in a car that had a heater. This is the most unbelievable luxury and I really don’t know how I am going to manage to go back to my car when this utterly fabulous little vehicle goes back on Sunday night. That little piece of total heaven was short lived as pretty much as soon as we arrived, we started to have doubts. The still fresh memory of Taste and of setting up a stall in the open air come flooding back and just to add an extra edge, the temperatures this morning (and indeed all day) were really and truly artic.
I got Jude all set up and had to race off to get to the day job where I spent a day worrying about him. He still has a dreadful cold and the very last place on the planet that you want to be with a bad cold is outside in sub zero temperatures, trying to sell very special, beautifully crafted wines to people who want free stuff. For although apparently the crowd today was better than it had been at Taste, many were still not really interested. They wanted English wine and they wanted to pay no more than £5 a bottle. It did not help that the temperatures meant that the samples got so cold, they froze both tongue and teeth on contact, sending several potential customers shrieking over to the fresh peppermint tea stall to recover. Apparently, biodynamic, sulphur free wine slush puppy is not delicious. Being so cold makes it very difficult to have a conversation about the merits of these wines and how they are made and why they are so special which means that really, this is not a place for Green & Blue. How on earth did we end up here again? Oh yes – Tom forgot to slap us.
Raced over to Lordship Lane late afternoon where there was an olive oil crisis which I think we have sorted (thank you VERY much lovely Liberty Wines) and spoke to some of our favourite regulars who were very cheering. Our landlord came in with a group of his agents for their Christmas drinks and it is only because Jude made me promise that I wouldn’t that I did not ask him to leave using complicated, colourful language. Given the situations with the drains both him and those that shall remain nameless remain on the blackest of black lists. So I said nothing but the temperature in the shop plummeted instantly down to Slow Food Fair Stall levels when he walked in. Then off to do two deliveries and pick up my poor popsicle of a spouse. Home at an incredibly respectable hour compared to the norm at the moment but it all starts again early tomorrow so best to try to get some sleep.
I will be on the stall tomorrow morning and given my extreme sensitivity to piercing, rapier-like cold, expect to be in a great deal of psychological and physical pain for most of it. We are trying to think positively about it – we did sell some wine today and the next three should be considerably busier. Christmas craziness has well and truly started in both sites, so we have sales in those two to hopefully cheer us up. After the last few months we really need these, so fingers crossed. We will be opening some incredible wines in both sites (to be tasted in the right conditions) and have all our fine and rare wines out on display -Ridge Montebello, Vega Sicilia Unico and magnums of Leflaive Puligny-Montrachet among others- in Lordship Lane, so all we need now are hordes of people, not after English wine for a fiver, who want something really special for Christmas.
