How about a post that actually does justice to the title of this blog?
I was a little early for my Saturday film and on my way to the cinema I passed The Chelsea Teapot. It is a relatively new cafe (they have been around for 3 months now) and it looked so lovely I had to step inside and have a tea there.
My mum visited me this weekend and with the weather being fantastic we have been outdoors a lot. Among a lot of other things, we did a lot of cycling!
As I swear this tea towel isn’t mine!
The Berkeley (Knightsbridge – London) does not look grand from the outside, but you know it is expensive when you spot the fully hotel-uniformed men (beautiful long coat, bowler hat, gloves) standing outside the door.
And I was waiting for one of them to tap me on the shoulder saying “where do you think you are going – you wear sneakers and jeans – how dare you step into our hotel!”. But they did not, in stead they smiled and were friendly and said “Good afternoon madam” and pushed the push door for me. See, that I like.
Here are some notes:
When you step into the lobby you sink until your neck in the carpet. OK, not exactly but it felt that way, it is very soft and beautiful and you just hope you don’t happen to have a piece of sticky chewing gum underneath your shoe when you walk there.
We had afternoon tea (high tea) and the people pouring us the tea wore white gloves. Also – whenever you had managed to drink your cup, they were already standing behind you asking if you wanted more. I drank a lot of cups.
The first time the girl serving me tea asked me if I wanted “English Breakfast”. Which I thought was an odd question, I was there at 3.30pm, and on my watch that is way passed breakfast time, I was here for the cakes, not for bacon and eggs and beans on toast! So I looked puzzled at her. And she suddenly realised what I was thinking and so did I and we both had to laugh about it. English Breakfast Tea she meant!
And then there were the things we could eat:
I have no idea what fancies are, but I did fancy the cakes we got, they tasted like heaven.
I always thought that it wouldn’t be me, hanging around in a posh hotel like this. But I could get used to handsome man in nice uniforms and a bowler hat holding the door open for me. And I had never had a high tea before, but I can surely recommend it. If you want to experience a tea like this yourself, it’s £35,=.
This was an event organised by London Girl Geek Dinners. I normally hate networking events like these, but I have visited two of their events now and I must say that the girls attending these meetings are the exact right group for me. The meetings are about gadgets, web and geekery stuff in stead of makeup, high heels and the latest fashion news which suits me quite well.
This particular event was sponsored by Eurostar, who made a short presentation about a web application they had developed. Eurostar had invited Brussel and Paris geek girls to London, and the tea was a good opportunity to mingle with them. There were some very nice people at this event and I will certainly attend more of these meetings. (and no they are not always in places like these!)
Passing the baker on my way to work (yes on Saturday!), my eye fell on this heart shaped one. I am glad I live in an area where we still have a real baker. Even though they are not open on Sundays like they were in Denmark, real bakers are the best.
But clearly I had to get one of those, erhm ….
“I want one of those heartshaped ones.Is it a Jammie Dodger?”
Of course it wasn’t. This was just a normal heart shaped shortbread the baker told me.
He did have really big Jammie Dodgers though, he said. And they looked scrummy too, maybe next time.
I told him that the whole British cookie – biscuit – shortbread-Jammie Dodger-cake-scone tradition still is beyond me. It feels like you need a university degree to become a baker, just to learn about all those different type. He thought that was funny.
What would we call a cookie/biscuit like this in the Netherlands I wonder?
And I really need to plan a proper afternoon tea in London one day. Just to indulge in all this sweetness.
It’s really not bad to spend your 42nd birthday with your best friend in a cafe in Widecombe-In-The-Moor having a cream tea that looked as good as this and tasted as good too.
We also visited Princetown which is known for the prison. And if you have seen Lucky Break (which of course you have, as Bill is in it) then you might recognize the prison. Lucky Break has partly been shot in Dartmoor Prison.
In Princetown I had my first Knickerbocker Glory ever (good experience) in a cafe built in their old police station.
And we also visited Exmouth which is a lovely town on the coast. And Budleigh which is an even lovelier small town on the coast with a pebbled beach and red cliffs in stead of the white chalky ones. Most importantly here though is that they sell the best ice cream I have tasted in Britain so far.
My birthday was perfect, and my weekend was too.
Last year I was hoping that the year ahead would have me make my short film. I did not quite manage to pull that off but I am still quite confident that SweetArts will be shot in October this year.
Last Monday I put my teeth in it, it was quite heavy to chew and it took a couple of days to get back into the writing groove. But I am in it, and spend most of the weekend in a cafe in Fulham, together with Billy, Milky Way Tea, the soundtrack of DIRL and the will power and persistence to finish this script.
I had several problems to solve in the script and it felt like an impossible task, something like climbing the Mt. Everest. This weekend I was relaxed enough to take one step at the time, and it is very close now, actually, it is so close that I dare to say that it will be finished this week.
Now “finished” sounds very final but scripts never are. With finished I mean that it will be in a state of which I am happy enough to send it to some friends to read. To get some comments from the real world.
So that’s how I have spend my weekend: writing in a cafe. There isn’t much I’d rather do.
So while you surely are at home, having a nice dinner, enjoying the weekend – I am still at the office. I am the only person in the office. And I am not working, not on work work anyway.
But I found a new song today, I am going to write a bit more about that at some point, because it is a nice story in itself, and that song made me pick up my pencil.
At last, I hear you think.
Yes at last.
I found 2 loudspeakers which I plugged into my (RED) iPod so there is great music.
I have Yorkshire Tea The Milky Way.
I have a pack with 4 3 Twix bars.
I have my Cookie script.
I have Bill keeping a weather eye on the horizon, making sure I am not going into too deep waters just yet. Or eat too many Twix bars.
I have a pencil and paper, and most importantly – I have inspiration.
I don’t know how long I am going to stay here, drawing, but it might take a while. This is good. And – where would we be without music to inspire us.
May you have a great weekend.
Don’t feel sorry for me sitting here, the kick of inspiration hitting you like lightning is nearly as good as, erhm, you know what. Really.
I could also have called it:
Not a bad way to start your day II.
Or – I missed my breakfast this morning, but someone brought this cake in!
Or – would you like tea with that?
Staring at the blank screen before me, there are a couple of cheap tricks to get around that and post something anyway:
1. post a postcard – yeah but there have been quite a few of them here lately
2. post a pathethic poem – let’s not shall we
3. post a funky song – well …
This one is from 1982, I was 16.
Tea on Trafalgar Square
I feel like someone pressed the ImprobaBILLity drive. Three times in a row or something. Which of course hasn’t been the case. S(larti) is first coming over tomorrow, but that’s a complete different story.
“Button your shirt” Davy says, being remarkably fresh after the night sitting with Nelson, watching it all from above.
Lucky devil.
“What shirt, buttons where?” I stumble.
“The shirt you’ve got on”
“I don’t know how to, I am too tired”
“Yes you do, come on”
I managed. Lacing my shoes took another 20 minutes.
And when I stepped out of the door the world looked a bit, ehrm blurry.
“Sure you haven’t forgotten something?” I hear Davy shout from inside.
“No. But it surely looks blurry outside. Weird!”
“Maybe putting your glasses on might do the trick”
“Oh. Yeah”
I am so tired – hence a chaotic post.
A Cup Of Tea In The Cafe
In the category “Why don’t I think before I do”: I have signed up to be a volunteer for a documentary.
Throughout our lives, we will meet hundreds of people, eat tonnes of food, spend money on a vast array of material goods, and create mountains of waste. But have you ever thought about what this all amounts to for one individual and what their human footprint is on the planet? This unique film reveals all in a series of remarkable stunts.
When I read that they were going to fill Trafalgar Square with 75.000 cups of tea, impulsively, you know, without thinking about how many cups of tea that actually is, I signed up to be a volunteer.
2nd of March 2007 – 4th night on the Trans Mongolian train
“Are you asleep?” ~Gina
“I have pretended to be dead since 1 am, but I am still alive, still awake.” ~Lawrence
I had pretended to be dead since 1 am, but at 2.36am in the night I was still alive, still awake. I reached for my mp3 player, as, unfortunately, there wasn’t a Lawrence available but J., my roommate asks me if I am awake, he couldn’t sleep either. We were completely awake in the middle of the night, in a train crossing through Siberia, a full moon lighting up the snow.
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If you thought Tea wasn’t a big thing here in the UK, think again. If you thought that deciding who should make the next cup isn’t a big thing here at work, think again too. Knowing that asking it the normal (verbal) way only results in an even longer wait for a cup, one of my colleagues began sending us encrypted messages in stead. This normally results in a few minutes puzzling, after which one of us normally ends up making the tea. Very clever idea.
Here is his latest puzzle. The question is – what does it say exactly? ( I admit that I find them rather difficult)
His name is Michael by the way – as everybody should at least have a chance of claiming his 15 minutes of fame, even when it’s not through a TV interview with Tom Cruise.
Floating around
I’m led astray
I want my tea
The Milky Way
And that is all you are going to get from me today. My colleague (Wow are they going to make it to the blog? Yes they did!) brought them from the Isle of Wight (on the list of to-visit), and they taste excellent with a cup of tea (with milk).
Oh-my-God.
The postman just came, here in the office, delivering a stack of office mail. He does that every day, nothing interesting there really.
From in between this stack of office mail, one of my colleagues fished a slightly different envelope, and handed it over to me. I normally never get post at work, not unless I have ordered something at Amazon or such like, but they never send me handwritten envelopes like this. So I was a bit surprised.
I checked the envelope one more time, this groovy handwriting, haven’t I seen that somewhere before?
Yeah right, don’t be pathetically ridiculous.
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(Detail of a poster for the Science Museum)
I love working in a hi-tech enviroment, and I am a gadget geek. And our office really is the center of technology.
In our mailbox today:
Something to remember in the Kitchen on the second floor: it’s on the same circuit as the server room, and the circuit seems to trip if both the dishwasher and kettle are on at the same time.
So if you put the kettle on, try and make sure the dishwasher is off…
…and vice-versa.
And someone hadn’t remembered that today, and guess what happened.
Lots of time for a cup of tea.
Today I did speak to Lorenzo, the owner of The New Piccadilly Cafe. The Cafe, my Cafe.
I paid my Minestrone soup, and asked him the question that had been bugging me since the last time I was there.
“Is it true that this Cafe is going to close?”
The Table in the New Piccadilly Cafe, Denman St, London W1
It was about time. Back in The Cafe. At last. It has been way too long.
I went there directly after work, picking up a newspaper to read, on my way.
