Green & Blue Summer Party
Green & Blue have their first summer party - a picnic followed by cartwheels in the streets at the Notting Hill Carnival.
Green & Blue have their first summer party - a picnic followed by cartwheels in the streets at the Notting Hill Carnival. Green & Blue Summer Party – 27th August 2007
Summer has not been good this year. Endless rain and unremittingly bad news, culminating in a truly horrible few weeks with financial markets melting down while ancient forests and farmland in Greece get burnt off the face of the earth. Closer to home, the birth of our second site, to two very tired people, has taken its toll. I did quite forget how much energy it takes to do this and while setting up the scholarship has given me a boost and a renewed sense of direction, that positivity has taken a bit of a battering back in the grey light of London.
We were not going to open either site on bank holiday Monday as there would have been little point and so, as a morale booster to all of us and in order to get our growing team to hopefully feel happy and bonded, we decided to have a summer party.
Jude and I have been fans of Notting Hill Carnival for a long time. I have been going every few years since 1991, when I was actually living on Westbourne Park Road – a glorious 2 days when I don’t think I slept more than 4 hours and danced in the streets till the very early hours on the second night. It was completely wonderful. Since then, there have been great years and less great years but it has always been worth visiting. It does take the ability to remain calm in a great crush of humanity, you have to be a fan of thumping, amazingly loud music and of course you can end up trapped in bits of it which are a sort of bizarre version of suburban hell on a day out, but I have always loved it.
After careful thought – not having very much of a budget, we decided to have a picnic at a small square near where we live (Queens Park) on the 27th, followed by a visit to Carnival. We would buy tickets to one of the carnival pubs so that people had a central meeting point for later or could choose just to hide out there if the streets were a bit overwhelming. As we have a predominantly young team (Olly – our new Clapham manager is around our age but he is the exception with the rest being very early to mid 20’s), we thought that there was a good chance that most would be rather taken with the idea.
Thankfully, we were right and all but one decided to celebrate summer, such as it was, with us.
For once this year, the weather co-operated and we gathered at lunch time at Queens Park Gardens.
I had bought 4 bottles of Ruinart Blanc de Blancs for those who arrived first and, selfishly, for myself as well. I tend to start off really quite confidently but generally hit my own personal sobriety wall around glass 2 and a half and then switch to water. I have started to think that maybe what I really need to release stress is a good, old fashioned drunken extravaganza where I forge straight over sobriety, spurning water post glass 2 until I well and truly hit the all singin’, all dancin’ stage but so far, good sense has prevailed. Anyway, the older I get, the more the mantra of quality not quantity (which is indeed one of the mantra’s of Green & Blue) is just too ingrained in me.
Not that this particular philosophy seems to have in anyway impacted on my beloved team, but then, I certainly would not have embraced it in my younger years either. Post Ruinart, there were peach bellini’s for all and many chose to supplement this with cheap and cheerful G & B wines that they bought themselves and, tragically, a bottle of skittles vodka. If you don’t immediately know what that is, then it is perhaps best that you don’t attempt enlightenment. If you absolutely must know though, it was a homemade bottle of vodka infused with violently coloured and flavoured sweets. It really defies description on many levels.
Food was a mixture of G & B left overs but thankfully (well, I do like to think it is because we serve such delicious food), no-one seemed bored with it and it was quite a spread. I had nut roast from Clapham (seriously good – lots of herbs and brown rice), semi dried tomatoes (appearing on Lordship Lane deli counter and soon to feature on new tapas there), salad, olives and marinated garlic. All quite perfect in the sun, in a green little park, sipping Ruinart.
General sobriety was definitely on the retreat by about 4:30pm when we started to pack up. This process happened surprisingly smoothly and swiftly given that it was post lunch. Joe from Clapham - an immensely creative and charming young man – had the very good idea of taking a picture, and if I have time and get it together, I will post that here. It will be a very good souvenir of this particular day and this time in the life of this company.
We trooped back to our flat to drop off the empty bottles for recycling and to bequeath our neighbours (who had come to the picnic – Harriet and Jez are honorary staff members as they were customers from before we opened our first shop) the left over food. It was quite an occasion actually – we certainly have never had so many people (27) in our tiny flat before. The queue for the loo stretched almost out of the door. Wayne (from Lordship Lane – the very tall and beautifully helpful and polite young Irish gentleman) had managed to soak his shorts in olive oil from the leaking semi dried tomato container while he carried it back from the park so he had to change into a pair of Jude’s trousers as well. I actually noticed on my way to the sports centre just near the square yesterday morning that we had left a trail of extra virgin olive oil all the way back. So much for being street.
Hands washed and bladders emptied and we were off. We are used to the fact that getting to exactly where we like to go at Carnival – generally the roads between Great Western, Westbourne park and Portabello – takes a while given the crowds, but this year was different. There are always a lot of police about, which is inevitable and important given the numbers, but there really did seem to be many more this year. When we got to the junction of Harrow and Great Western road, a cordon of officers informed us that it was closed. They did not know when it would open and they could not guarantee that we would get in if we ploughed our way back to the blue bridge – the other closest entrance point. This was really not good news, especially not after having led a troop of 26 to this point down a congested road. I asked the policeman why they were doing this this year. He said they did it every year but I can honestly say that in all the years I have been, I have never encountered it before.
We begged and pleaded for a bit – a completely futile exercise - can you imagine how many less than completely sober people had tried that tack? The police were patient and polite to a medal winning degree in the face of this. Finally, I suggested we go back to the blue bridge where, the officer we were talking to, thought we would have a better chance. Just as we all turned around, the god of carnival smiled on us and, just like that, word came through that the entrance we were at was again open and a river of revellers surged through.
It was a fairly short lived surge. Soon, we hit another wall of people and started to do the carnival shuffle – the only way to move through many parts of it. Luckily, a float came along behind us and we were able to follow in its wake. Ania – one of our Polish team who wins the wine descriptions of the year award and who is a particularly exuberant young lady – turned several cartwheels and performed a unique, eastern European take on carnival dancing. It certainly was an amazing sight. ‘She is like that a lot’ shouted Claire to me over the noise of the float ‘That is actually the equivalent of how she explains wine to customers. It’s great’. Great indeed – she will be very missed when she goes back to Poland to study civil engineering soon. The other younger G & B ladies (Claire, Eliza and Ellie – Eliza being our blackboard maestro and about to start an Art degree) followed in her wake, albeit with slightly less uninhibited commitment. I had a very happy moment being thankful for the fact that we work with very young people. There is much to be said, when you are feeling generally tired and jaded, for unadulterated enthusiasm and carefreeness. I know there is no such word but there damn well should be.
We finally got to the pub – the Metropolitan near Westbourne Park station. Some chose to stay at the pub then but I few of us wanted to dive right back in and so we did. It is an often annoying habit of older people (annoying not because it isn’t true – it is our tragedy that almost always these days, it is horribly true), to dismiss experiences as not being as good as they used to be. I must be getting old, because for the first time, I have to say that carnival absolutely was not what it used to be. The police cordon we had first encountered was replicated on every street corner and on 4 occasions on our journey through the streets, we had to wait to move on. Whole streets that used to have 3 or 4 sound systems in them did not have any and those that did had 2 at most. The whole feeling of moving through different spheres of music, each with its own crowd of devotees, jumping up and bowing down at the alter of that particular MC or DJ and being able to join that crowd or just watch for a while before moving on, was completely gone. It was still fun, but only in very small bursts and mainly, it was just really quite exhausting so that finally, after about an hour, we had all had enough and wanted to go back to the pub. This turned into another convoluted and meandering journey. We got to a mere few metres away but thanks to another cordon, we had to go the very long way round the block to get to it. The rigours of this journey split us up and when Jude and I realised we were alone, we stopped on Westbourne park road to wait for the others and watch the floats for a while.
This was absolutely the highlight of this carnival. I know that this year was celebrating 200 years of the end of slavery and the float that was passing right then was obviously commemorating this. Part of the procession showed men and women in chains in the midst of others in the sort of shimmering, celebratory, fantastical costumes that carnival is famous for. It is, for me, very easy to feel moved at carnival – the movement and music will do that by itself, but this was slightly different and perhaps after all, entirely fitting both for the age I am now and where the world is now. I can’t expect to just dance without a care in the world anymore. Things have moved on from there. Up until now, I guess, I have managed at least an afternoon or evening of complete escapism before having tp plunge right back into reality, but right at this particular point, even that is to much to hope for. I guess that the secret is to try to grab the carefree moments when you can, no matter how very fleeting, without losing sight of how deadly serious it all is at the same time. I stood and watched that procession and thought about quite what a profoundly awful future we have been hell bent on creating for ourselves for so many hundreds of years. Can you begin to imagine the world today if from the beginning, humanity had completely rejected the elements that saw fit to enslave other human beings. Never mind what that did to the cultures enslaved, but what it did to the fabric of modern society and the entrenched attitudes we still hold – and I don’t just mean issues of colour. I mean issues of greed, entitlement, materialism, lack of any real feelings of empathy or understanding of fellow man. What the fuck have we done and what, more importantly, are we doing now that in years to come we will pay for, deeply and horribly and in ways that render us barely human.
It is a strange time now and I know I need a proper, long rest before I can come back fighting so on an energising level our summer party was not a great boost. It was very good in other ways though. I think we have a truly wonderful team of people who work for us and I think that they do an amazing job. They work very hard – at work that really is not easy – and many of them have embraced the world of wine with a passion and devotion that is incredible to behold. I think they all had fun and I hope that they do all feel like more of a team now. It actually gave Jude and I quite a start to see such a collection of people together. Granted, many bought partners, but still, we vividly remember the days when we were four and suddenly, we seem to have spread to fifteen. If we can, against the odds, get this far, I am sure we will go further. We don’t do things nearly as perfectly as I would like, not just in everyday things but in running this business to be as sustainable and responsible as possible but we just have to keep trying and slowly, but surely, pushing further. And if there is no time or energy to dance all night, then at least don’t forget to enjoy the procession – or the energy of those who can turn cartwheels.
Summer has not been good this year. Endless rain and unremittingly bad news, culminating in a truly horrible few weeks with financial markets melting down while ancient forests and farmland in Greece get burnt off the face of the earth. Closer to home, the birth of our second site, to two very tired people, has taken its toll. I did quite forget how much energy it takes to do this and while setting up the scholarship has given me a boost and a renewed sense of direction, that positivity has taken a bit of a battering back in the grey light of London.
We were not going to open either site on bank holiday Monday as there would have been little point and so, as a morale booster to all of us and in order to get our growing team to hopefully feel happy and bonded, we decided to have a summer party.
Jude and I have been fans of Notting Hill Carnival for a long time. I have been going every few years since 1991, when I was actually living on Westbourne Park Road – a glorious 2 days when I don’t think I slept more than 4 hours and danced in the streets till the very early hours on the second night. It was completely wonderful. Since then, there have been great years and less great years but it has always been worth visiting. It does take the ability to remain calm in a great crush of humanity, you have to be a fan of thumping, amazingly loud music and of course you can end up trapped in bits of it which are a sort of bizarre version of suburban hell on a day out, but I have always loved it.
After careful thought – not having very much of a budget, we decided to have a picnic at a small square near where we live (Queens Park) on the 27th, followed by a visit to Carnival. We would buy tickets to one of the carnival pubs so that people had a central meeting point for later or could choose just to hide out there if the streets were a bit overwhelming. As we have a predominantly young team (Olly – our new Clapham manager is around our age but he is the exception with the rest being very early to mid 20’s), we thought that there was a good chance that most would be rather taken with the idea.
Thankfully, we were right and all but one decided to celebrate summer, such as it was, with us.
For once this year, the weather co-operated and we gathered at lunch time at Queens Park Gardens.
I had bought 4 bottles of Ruinart Blanc de Blancs for those who arrived first and, selfishly, for myself as well. I tend to start off really quite confidently but generally hit my own personal sobriety wall around glass 2 and a half and then switch to water. I have started to think that maybe what I really need to release stress is a good, old fashioned drunken extravaganza where I forge straight over sobriety, spurning water post glass 2 until I well and truly hit the all singin’, all dancin’ stage but so far, good sense has prevailed. Anyway, the older I get, the more the mantra of quality not quantity (which is indeed one of the mantra’s of Green & Blue) is just too ingrained in me.
Not that this particular philosophy seems to have in anyway impacted on my beloved team, but then, I certainly would not have embraced it in my younger years either. Post Ruinart, there were peach bellini’s for all and many chose to supplement this with cheap and cheerful G & B wines that they bought themselves and, tragically, a bottle of skittles vodka. If you don’t immediately know what that is, then it is perhaps best that you don’t attempt enlightenment. If you absolutely must know though, it was a homemade bottle of vodka infused with violently coloured and flavoured sweets. It really defies description on many levels.
Food was a mixture of G & B left overs but thankfully (well, I do like to think it is because we serve such delicious food), no-one seemed bored with it and it was quite a spread. I had nut roast from Clapham (seriously good – lots of herbs and brown rice), semi dried tomatoes (appearing on Lordship Lane deli counter and soon to feature on new tapas there), salad, olives and marinated garlic. All quite perfect in the sun, in a green little park, sipping Ruinart.
General sobriety was definitely on the retreat by about 4:30pm when we started to pack up. This process happened surprisingly smoothly and swiftly given that it was post lunch. Joe from Clapham - an immensely creative and charming young man – had the very good idea of taking a picture, and if I have time and get it together, I will post that here. It will be a very good souvenir of this particular day and this time in the life of this company.
We trooped back to our flat to drop off the empty bottles for recycling and to bequeath our neighbours (who had come to the picnic – Harriet and Jez are honorary staff members as they were customers from before we opened our first shop) the left over food. It was quite an occasion actually – we certainly have never had so many people (27) in our tiny flat before. The queue for the loo stretched almost out of the door. Wayne (from Lordship Lane – the very tall and beautifully helpful and polite young Irish gentleman) had managed to soak his shorts in olive oil from the leaking semi dried tomato container while he carried it back from the park so he had to change into a pair of Jude’s trousers as well. I actually noticed on my way to the sports centre just near the square yesterday morning that we had left a trail of extra virgin olive oil all the way back. So much for being street.
Hands washed and bladders emptied and we were off. We are used to the fact that getting to exactly where we like to go at Carnival – generally the roads between Great Western, Westbourne park and Portabello – takes a while given the crowds, but this year was different. There are always a lot of police about, which is inevitable and important given the numbers, but there really did seem to be many more this year. When we got to the junction of Harrow and Great Western road, a cordon of officers informed us that it was closed. They did not know when it would open and they could not guarantee that we would get in if we ploughed our way back to the blue bridge – the other closest entrance point. This was really not good news, especially not after having led a troop of 26 to this point down a congested road. I asked the policeman why they were doing this this year. He said they did it every year but I can honestly say that in all the years I have been, I have never encountered it before.
We begged and pleaded for a bit – a completely futile exercise - can you imagine how many less than completely sober people had tried that tack? The police were patient and polite to a medal winning degree in the face of this. Finally, I suggested we go back to the blue bridge where, the officer we were talking to, thought we would have a better chance. Just as we all turned around, the god of carnival smiled on us and, just like that, word came through that the entrance we were at was again open and a river of revellers surged through.
It was a fairly short lived surge. Soon, we hit another wall of people and started to do the carnival shuffle – the only way to move through many parts of it. Luckily, a float came along behind us and we were able to follow in its wake. Ania – one of our Polish team who wins the wine descriptions of the year award and who is a particularly exuberant young lady – turned several cartwheels and performed a unique, eastern European take on carnival dancing. It certainly was an amazing sight. ‘She is like that a lot’ shouted Claire to me over the noise of the float ‘That is actually the equivalent of how she explains wine to customers. It’s great’. Great indeed – she will be very missed when she goes back to Poland to study civil engineering soon. The other younger G & B ladies (Claire, Eliza and Ellie – Eliza being our blackboard maestro and about to start an Art degree) followed in her wake, albeit with slightly less uninhibited commitment. I had a very happy moment being thankful for the fact that we work with very young people. There is much to be said, when you are feeling generally tired and jaded, for unadulterated enthusiasm and carefreeness. I know there is no such word but there damn well should be.
We finally got to the pub – the Metropolitan near Westbourne Park station. Some chose to stay at the pub then but I few of us wanted to dive right back in and so we did. It is an often annoying habit of older people (annoying not because it isn’t true – it is our tragedy that almost always these days, it is horribly true), to dismiss experiences as not being as good as they used to be. I must be getting old, because for the first time, I have to say that carnival absolutely was not what it used to be. The police cordon we had first encountered was replicated on every street corner and on 4 occasions on our journey through the streets, we had to wait to move on. Whole streets that used to have 3 or 4 sound systems in them did not have any and those that did had 2 at most. The whole feeling of moving through different spheres of music, each with its own crowd of devotees, jumping up and bowing down at the alter of that particular MC or DJ and being able to join that crowd or just watch for a while before moving on, was completely gone. It was still fun, but only in very small bursts and mainly, it was just really quite exhausting so that finally, after about an hour, we had all had enough and wanted to go back to the pub. This turned into another convoluted and meandering journey. We got to a mere few metres away but thanks to another cordon, we had to go the very long way round the block to get to it. The rigours of this journey split us up and when Jude and I realised we were alone, we stopped on Westbourne park road to wait for the others and watch the floats for a while.
This was absolutely the highlight of this carnival. I know that this year was celebrating 200 years of the end of slavery and the float that was passing right then was obviously commemorating this. Part of the procession showed men and women in chains in the midst of others in the sort of shimmering, celebratory, fantastical costumes that carnival is famous for. It is, for me, very easy to feel moved at carnival – the movement and music will do that by itself, but this was slightly different and perhaps after all, entirely fitting both for the age I am now and where the world is now. I can’t expect to just dance without a care in the world anymore. Things have moved on from there. Up until now, I guess, I have managed at least an afternoon or evening of complete escapism before having tp plunge right back into reality, but right at this particular point, even that is to much to hope for. I guess that the secret is to try to grab the carefree moments when you can, no matter how very fleeting, without losing sight of how deadly serious it all is at the same time. I stood and watched that procession and thought about quite what a profoundly awful future we have been hell bent on creating for ourselves for so many hundreds of years. Can you begin to imagine the world today if from the beginning, humanity had completely rejected the elements that saw fit to enslave other human beings. Never mind what that did to the cultures enslaved, but what it did to the fabric of modern society and the entrenched attitudes we still hold – and I don’t just mean issues of colour. I mean issues of greed, entitlement, materialism, lack of any real feelings of empathy or understanding of fellow man. What the fuck have we done and what, more importantly, are we doing now that in years to come we will pay for, deeply and horribly and in ways that render us barely human.
It is a strange time now and I know I need a proper, long rest before I can come back fighting so on an energising level our summer party was not a great boost. It was very good in other ways though. I think we have a truly wonderful team of people who work for us and I think that they do an amazing job. They work very hard – at work that really is not easy – and many of them have embraced the world of wine with a passion and devotion that is incredible to behold. I think they all had fun and I hope that they do all feel like more of a team now. It actually gave Jude and I quite a start to see such a collection of people together. Granted, many bought partners, but still, we vividly remember the days when we were four and suddenly, we seem to have spread to fifteen. If we can, against the odds, get this far, I am sure we will go further. We don’t do things nearly as perfectly as I would like, not just in everyday things but in running this business to be as sustainable and responsible as possible but we just have to keep trying and slowly, but surely, pushing further. And if there is no time or energy to dance all night, then at least don’t forget to enjoy the procession – or the energy of those who can turn cartwheels.
