Warm comfort

We have some strange requests.
Tuna and chilli jacket potatoes.
Ham salads without the salad.
Skinny latte and the biggest piece of chocolate cake we have.
Yesterday we were asked for hot water.
Or rather we were asked if we would fill a lady's hot water bottle.
She'd come straight from the dentist after having a tooth out.
She sat smiling, cradling the hwb to her cheek.
I hope cake didn't have anything to do with the extraction....

Home forts from abroad

In late afternoon a group of German students came in. They drank cappuccinos (cappuccini?) and ate coffee and walnut cake and Tyrells crisps.
Then their teachers arrived and drank coffee and ate scones.
No one ordered tea.
Two of the girls left a message in the visitors' book surrounded by hearts: Sweet garden and we love your castle.

Them apples

Bank Holiday Monday went well.
Apart from the fact that we ran out of panini in the first fifteen minutes.
Poorer weather didn't affect us too much because of the Art & Craft Exhibition running in the Church. Thank goodness.
I had a confusing conversation with a man who'd just finished a piece of apple cake. He asked me if there was jam in it. I checked what he'd had. No. No jam.
His daughter giggled and said he was trying to get the recipe out of me.
"I'm 90," he said, "and I make cakes just for myself so I want to know if it's real apples in there or apple jam." The penny started falling...No. The apples are Worcestershire ones. No jam involved. 
He wanted more.
Do you cook them before they go in?
I explained that the cakes were made by Angela in Abberley and there's no way she'd tell me her recipe but I'd guess they went in raw.
He took her card and is going to call her to beg her method.
I don't fancy his chances.

Bread and Whine

That was the busiest day of the season (so far?).

Off to bed to recharge for Bank Holiday Monday. Although the forecast looks really dodgy.
Whatever happens we won't be serving many panini tomorrow. I thought I'd ordered enough for three days (our bakers aren't working Bank Hols) but we only have four left.

My feet ache.

In stock

We are bursting at the seams with cake and milk and cream and strawberries. In the last week I've had dozens of deliveries. We are not going to run out of local apple juice. We shall have enough jacket spuds. I've cooked two hams today. Phil the cheese has brought me SIX half moons of his Elgar Mature for the ploughmans.
The fridges are working overtime.
This weekend is the last Bank Hol of our season and we have to be prepared despite what the weather people say. There's an art and craft exhibition in the Church all weekend which will draw a crowd.
Am hoping the crowd members will be desperate for a cuppa.
I also have a new gluten and dairy free cake with which to tempt them. It's Lemon and Courgette and crumbs it's bloomin' good. I accidentally cut a piece so badly today that I had to eat it.
Strange how these accidents occur.

Someone's written in the visitors' book: "try the gluten free cake even if you don't need to".

This Is Your Life. Parts I and II

Another busy one despite an astonishing downpour late morning.
It was panini-central again - the kind of day when i think it would be useful to have a larger panini machine. Or a second one.
Yesterday I'd been surprised when my former boss and his wife turned up on the way home to London "from seeing Everton beat Man United". 
Today a woman approached the counter and called me Gillian which means one of two things. Either she knows my Dad (who only ever calls me by my full name) or she was from my school days before I took to introducing myself as Gill. I know it's only marginally better but it's all in the margins.
Anyway.
Standing before me was my high school PE teacher. The woman who 30 years ago wrote on my school report that I was very "timid" on the hockey field. A true understatement since I never turned up for hockey. I had a piano lesson instead (in which I was equally timid. Or bored).
Anyway.
She had a cappuccino and a piece of millionaire's shortbread and went and sat outside in the sunshine. 
We chatted for ages and as she left I told her I was surprised she could remember me given how rubbish I was at all sport and physical education.
She said she remembered me because I was "effervescent".
Wow, I thought, and went back into the kitchen to tell Freda.
"Effervescent," said Freda, "What? Like Andrews liver salts?"

No wonder she remembered me if I had the same effect. 

Tea and Jerusalem

This has been WI week.
On Monday we hosted a tea party for the Great Witley group as well as the Salwarpe members. Two separate groups in the same conservatory.
Then yesterday Fernhill Heath WI  managed to take their  tea and scones outside.
All  using the china teacups and saucers (and tea plates)  I gathered for the wedding last year.
It made me quite nervous serving afternoon tea to the queens of cake.
We got away with it though.

Today should have been quiet. It poured with rain.
Shows what I know.

Food. But not fast.

Such a busy one.
And unexpected. The forecast I'd seen had not been promising.
So when the rush came and didn't let up we just kept our heads down and worked through it. Order after order - and there were only four of us. One took orders for teas, coffees, sandwiches, jacket potatoes, toasted teacakes, cake, quiche, salads, one made the lunches, one cleared and washed up and one filled and took out trays. The cake display had only three items left in it by the end of the day.
We tried to warn everyone that it might take us longer than usual to get stuff to them. Most didn't mind a bit. They'd found a table in the garden and were soaking up the sun for the afternoon.
But one lady didn't like the wait. And she told me so, with a couple at the next table joining in for good measure. I gave her back her money and apologised. She went on her way with her friend.
But it was another couple who reduced me to tears.
They'd witnessed the complaint while waiting for their own lunch.
When they'd eaten and were preparing to leave they pressed a five pound note into my hand:
"We can see how hard you've all been working," they said, "and we'll certainly be back. We love it here."
I cried.

Later this afternoon the friend of the complainer rang the tea rooms to apologise.
She told us she couldn't wait to get home to call.

There are some truly lovely people in this world.  Thank you.

Bloomin' obvious

Over the Winter I should really read a gardening book.
I can only blag my way through so much of the conservatory for so long.
Which is currently looking like a jungle because the passion flower's gone completely bonkers. It's hanging down over tables and curling itself round every other plant, and dropping closed flowers all over the place.  
If someone asks about a plant I haven't a clue about I do that thing where I say "ooh not sure, but look over there - have you seen the fig tree/kiwi/bonkers passion flower?" I caught myself this week telling someone how strange that the wisteria was coming back into bloom...   
Yesterday I was asked what the orange flower in the garden is. Not a scooby of an idea. But it's pretty. I know now (asked the ma-in-law) it's Montbretia and the fact that I know it means noone else will ask until I've forgotten the name again.
So I'd just got to grips with Montbretia when a woman asked about the red flowering plant in the conservatory. Ah good. I know that one. So I told her. But she wasn't placated. She wanted to know how to spell it. Thank goodness for the in-laws again.
It's Abutilon.

A shade less naughty.

A smashing day when the staff made me laugh as much as the customers.
My personal highlight was hearing Jennifer ask Nancie if she'd read "that forty shades of grey"?
We reckon she must have the abridged version.

Ash, beech, oak, sycamore, horse chestnut

Another glorious day yesterday. The parasols are no longer functioning as umbrellas. We were busy but not  so busy that I didn't have chance for a few conversations in the garden.
One man asked about opening hours and days and whether they could take a different route back to the car park and when I answered all his questions proclaimed me to be the fount of all knowledge. Only where the tea rooms and car park location is concerned. Not a huge specialist subject.
When I next came out he had a trickier one - was the tree in front of him a eucalyptus?
Erm. I said. I always thought it was a silver birch? Not one of the five trees I learnt in primary school but still  the easiest to identify. But I checked with others in the know and went back to tell him it was indeed a silver birch.  He now thinks I'm brain of Britain.
It was also baby day. We had a ten week old, a 13 week old and a 14 week old join us at different times.
I know a lot about one of them.
His mother, holding him, told her group of friends: "He's been constipated for days." One of them pointed to her arm where something was - well - dripping, and replied: "well I don't think he is now."

Fat chance

Unlike Mo and Jess E the tearooms pace has slowed. We've had some very busy lunchtimes even when the forecast has been poor but then the velodrome and Eton Dorney call and cake is pushed unceremoniously into mouths and we're left to wash the crumbs from plates and wait for the highlights in the evening.  
So into the Olympics am I that I've bought some Bradley Wiggins stamps.
The legacy thing is working too.
Will fudge-eating be included in Rio cos I think I could certainly medal?