Much Ado All Round
Tea, cakes, cocktails and printing with the help of a rusty tin
You know the feeling, you haven’t been to an afternoon tea for ages, and suddenly there are two within the same week! They neatly sandwiched a workshop I went to last weekend, and suddenly I found myself quite busy…
Much Ado About Theming
A friend of mine from Germany was in London for a few days. And although she had the husband and 16-year-old son in tow, they were up for meeting up with me. Off I went on another day trip to London to drag them to the Southbank and specifically The Swan for afternoon tea. The Swan is the restaurant attached to Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre and they do an afternoon tea that is usually themed to one of the productions that are on at the time.
This season - you might have already guessed this if you were paying attention to my titles - it is Much Ado About Nothing, and in the theming this came through… not at all! Apart from the overall name. No little funny names for the dishes, no little nods to the play on the menu, no NOTHING!
We sampled both the classic afternoon tea, with the usual assortment of sandwiches, scones and little sweet treats, and the gentleman’s tea, which included fish and chips with mushy peas, a pulled pork bun, a smoked salmon open sandwich, a mini bowl of Caesar Salad, a savoury scone with blue cheese spread, a small savoury tart and a tiny macaron.
It was all delicious, but I’m still disappointed by the lack of theming. I mean, why not call one of them Beatrice’s and the other one Benedick’s, for example? Really, it’s not that hard!
Otherwise, we had a lovely day. We were really lucky with the weather and my friend and I ended up promenading along the river to see Tower Bridge, while the boys went to the London Dungeon. Once they went back to their accommodation, I met up with one of the friends I made in China to have a chilled out drink in the cafe/bar on the ground floor of the Tate Modern, which was really nice.
Trains were on time, too. A perfect little day!
Much Ado About Printing
The workshop I did was an introduction to “eco-printing” - basically we soaked paper in alum (sulfate? yes, I didn’t really pay attention), dipped plant material in rusty water (it has a proper name, but that’s basically what it was), put it on the paper, built up many layers, tied it together as tightly as we could and then boiled it in more rusty water.
It took me less than 15 minutes in that room to know that this will not become a staple in my creative practice. It just wasn’t for me.
That wasn’t helped by this being the most chaotic workshop out of all the workshops I can remember. It was not well-structured or led or explained or anything.
It was fun - once I had adjusted my expectations a little.
And in the afternoon we printed on one long strip that we pressed by wrapping it around a rusty tin. That was pretty cool and of all the things I printed that strip is the one thing I am happy with and want to turn into a little accordion-fold book.
Much Ado About Booking
The other afternoon tea was in Sheffield, where I met up with my Nottingham friend who has made previous guest appearances tied to afternoon teas in these posts. I had scoured the internet for an afternoon tea and/or venue that looked special, and found a gem - The Lost & Found.
Not going to lie, booking it was a bit of a production. Not just because it was hard for me and my friend to find a date we could both do, but usually I just book something online and that is that. Here I booked something, which turned out to be a request. Then they got back to me asking me whether I could change the time to earlier. Then I had to confirm what we wanted. Then I got a personalised email to pre-book the food. Seriously? Why did you just ask me what I wanted if I now have to book it again? When I clicked on said link I was informed that my type of booking didn’t allow this. SERIOUSLY?? Why then send the link??? And then, when we got there, we found a sign outside saying they were closed for a private event…
Reader, it was fine. We had a confirmed booking, and they had asked us to come earlier in order for them to be ready for the event. They had also tried calling me when they put the sign outside to let me know that we should just ignore it, I just hadn’t received the call because I was on a train. There was an email, which I didn’t check between getting to Sheffield and getting to the restaurant.
Don’t be discouraged by this to-do, though. The staff was wonderful, the place is beautiful and the afternoon tea was lush, including the cheeky cocktail we treated ourselves to. As a bonus the weather was fabulous which allowed us to sit and enjoy this treat outside.
Much Ado About Missions
Otherwise, I have been keeping busy with my online work. Turns out that once in a while they put on these missions, which are opportunities for people to get bonuses if they work a certain amount of hours or do a certain amount of things within a certain time frame. Like if they think less people will be working over a holiday weekend and they want to incentivise more to put some hours in, or they have something due but not enough work has been completed, or so I imagine.
Over the last 2 weeks or so, I was offered - I think - 6 missions and I have to say, I’m not hating it. Although I think it is unusual for there to be so many. It definitely motivates me to do more than my self-set daily target.
Gamification is everything!
(Today I was offered two separate missions at the same time for different projects, even though I only work on one of the projects… and I’m pretty sure they counted my work for both of them at the same time… not just a bonus, an extra free bonus! Shhh! Don’t tell anyone!)