Falling in love again

For the last three years the garden has, to me, felt a little melancholy, almost as if it was missing Sir Reresby - I'm a little fanciful like that - however, I managed a quick walk around the garden this week. Wow! Whether it is the weather or whether the garden is coming out of mourning I don't know, but it really took my breath away and I fell in love with it all over again. I love the opening up of the entry to the garden and there are some beautiful plants in this area, the changes on top lawn give a feeling of a few more acres and the lowering of the hedge in the secret garden to give the view down to the lakes is fantastic and, I have a whole new 'must have' list of plants for my own already overstocked garden. Of course, reality is, that a new owner is breathing new life into her garden and it is wonderful.

A few years ago I went on 5 days of customer awareness training. One day of the course was dedicated to trying to understand why a customer might be a little grumpy. This involved having split peas in your shoes, wearing sunglasses smeared with vaseline, earplugs and rubber gloves with the fingers stuff with cotton wool. The aim of the exercise was to give you some idea of what some of your customers, unbeknownst to you, might be experiencing, which may in turn explain their 'mood'. I think I can say we (and speak for all of us in the café) have had to draw on this training several times in the last few weeks. There have been a number of people with split peas in their shoes. Like the woman who wanted Pheasant Pithivier but didn't want to wait! In the past I have heard people remark in different settings that service in shops/restaurants in the UK is not as good as on the continent, knowing that we all try really hard in the café I would counter that and suggest that maybe as customers we have a lot to learn, staff can have split pea filled shoes too. The customer isn't necessarily always right but customer service training dictates that you can't tell the customer what you're really thinking ergo the customer gets the last word.

The sunshine yesterday brought out lots of familiar faces which was lovely. What a shame the summer is not quite barbecue hot. Fingers crossed we'll have an Indian summer to make up for it. I'm having a day off today and on the top of my 'to do list' is mow the lawn.  Not this week!

See you soon

Lou x