Lovely comments from visitors today:
“Fabulous soup”
“May I have the recipe for that blackcurrant crumble?”
“We’ll be fitting in as many visits as we can before you close for Winter”
Not so lovely comment:
“Just thought you should know that one of your toilets is blocked”
A return to an old blog feature - customer of the day.
We had plenty of candidates today but one man stood out. His order came to £13.75.
“1375,” he said, “Not sure about that as a year. I like to think of something that happened in history and that’s a tricky one.” He gave it another few seconds then added, “It was the time of Edward III and the 100 years war. One of the treaties that ended the war was signed in 1375. Not very exciting, but there you go.”
I hope he comes back every day to add to my education.
We have just a few weeks left of what has been, for everyone, a very strange season. We’re aiming to close on Sunday 1st November. I say “aiming” because who knows whether we’ll be allowed to stay open that long. It’s all about the known unknowns and the unknown unknowns...
Customers have reacted very well to the changes since 4th July and have followed our guidelines. We’ve had plenty of comments about how safe they feel with the social distancing measures in place and the proof of that is that they have returned, often with other people. Plenty have signed in using the NHS app and, in the whole of the time we’ve been open, we’ve only had a handful of visitors refusing to give us contact details. More people than ever have chosen to sit outside even on the not-so-warm days.
This week has been among the most difficult I’ve faced. The weather has not been kind, which always has an impact, but it also feels as if the rise in cases across the country has also had an impact. Are more people choosing to stay at home again? This weekend will be telling. The weather forecast is mixed but mostly pretty good. We could do with some better numbers to counter some poor days this past week.
There’s still humour to be found in all this uncertainty, thank goodness. We hear tales of masks issues and steamed up glasses, parents who say they’ll happily sit apart from their children even though they’re still within the rule of six, the same comments about calories and no-sugar-thank-you-I’m-sweet-enough.
My favourite comment came from a lady who told me that she came to us because she knew it was possible to be “socially different”.
