That’s All Folks…

Well, this wasn’t the post I thought I’d be putting up next. As you probably know from my last post, I had quite a few entries planned.

But when it came down to it, the only post I actually had the energy to write was this one.

I always said blogging is only worth doing if you’re writing posts for yourself. It doesn’t matter how many people read what you write, as long as you’re posting for yourself. I know I don’t have a huge readership. Most of the people who read my posts are people I know. And it’s mainly for them that I’m writing this one. I’m not one for big dramatic exits. I’d much rather fade into the background and disappear without anyone noticing.

Over the past few months I’ve become frustrated with the ‘blogging community’. It’s not what it once was, and really isn’t a community any more. Blogging isn’t blogging as I knew it, any more.  The majority of people do it for reasons I wouldn’t choose to do it. And even people who do it well, and for the right reasons, aren’t doing it for the reasons I used to (and still do). Blogging doesn’t mean what it once did. And so I have increasingly found I’m not a blogger. I am in the original sense, but not a blogger in the way it’s meant now.

I started blogging 20 years ago. I’ve been writing this particular blog for almost 10 years. But now I can’t keep up, I can’t compete, and I don’t want to. Not only that, I have found I resent the time I find it takes to write, edit and photograph for each post. It takes between 1-2 hours for a standard post, per post. And that’s time I could be spending with family, friends, taking care of myself.

I love to write, but I don’t have the energy for it any more.

I’m not saying I’ll stop for good. I’m not saying I’ll never post again. Who knows what the future holds. But I am saying that the accidentally self-imposed blog schedule is too much for me now. I’m saying that sharing my thoughts has taken a different format over the years and it’s much kinder to my time to post things on instagram. I’m saying that I don’t have the energy to think of things to write, and pretend that the things I write hold my own attention, let alone the attention of anyone who might fancy reading it.

It also means I won’t be completing my 2018 food challenge. I’ve completed 40 recipes (posted 39) which is huge. It’s been great fun and I’ve expanded my recipe book and my skill-set during the challenge. But again, it’s too tough right now. So here’s where it ends. I’ll most likely post pictures of recipes I make on instagram (find me at @groggits) and I know I’ll keep making the effort to look for new recipes more regularly.

But for now, I want to thank you for reading, and supporting. Thanks for the clicks and the comments. And who knows, I might see you back here again, one day.

This Week I Have Been Mostly…. Florida Edition!

And we’re back! This week, I have been mostly recovering from jet lag….

We landed last Saturday morning, and were immediately confronted with car troubles, when all we wanted to do was drive home and sleep and then dribble on the sofa whilst catching up with Bake Off.

We still managed to do some of that, but only after a good few hours of stress levels we just weren’t capable of handling at that point in time. What a bump back into reality, eh?

Car all sorted, we were able to reflect on what was a really great holiday. Two weeks of making it up as we went along in Orlando, was just what we’d hoped it would be. I’m not planning to write a dedicated post on everything we did, however, I’ll just give you a little rundown now AND I’m planning on posting a couple of food related posts, all about what and where we ate (that’s the important stuff, right?). There are some amazing little places you can find, if you just know where to look. So I’m going to tell you – keep your eyes peeled for those posts, over the coming weeks.

Anyway, here’s what we got up to:

We started off our trip with the traditional breakfast at Cracker Barrel. I’ll tell you more about this place in my food post, but it’s a really lovely relaxed ‘country’ style restaurant that serves a pretty decent breakfast.

We visited some of the little towns around Orlando. This is Celebration and is so pretty.

We went to a NFL football game, and saw the Tampa Bay Buccaneers play the Pittsburgh Steelers, which was a great experience.

We ate a LOT of great food, saw some amazing places and tried not to expire in the 40c heat!

We visited the Kennedy Space Center which was something on my bucket list. It was really interested and such an amazing place to visit.

We did some Disney World Resort hopping and saw some resorts we’d never been to before, and also visited the Magic Kingdom for one of their Halloween parties.

It really was a great trip, and felt a bit like we managed to finish off the things we didn’t do last year, but simultaneously warm ourselves up for our proper Disney World holiday next year!

But now we’re home, we’re back to it! Halloween is around the corner, and though I normally post quite a lot with regards to scary movies this time of year, I only have one post like that planned this year. So if you’re a fan of Blumhouse, keep an eye out for that post coming shortly. I also have plenty more recipes coming as part of my 2018 Food Challenge, and I also need to tell you about a live podcast recording I went to recently.

There’s so much to come! Stay tuned 🙂

In The Land of The Free

Well, it might not feel so free at the moment, but you get the picture….

In a couple of days I fly back to Orlando for a 2 week holiday (whoo!)

We’re going to spend it soaking up the Florida sun and exploring some places we’ve never been, visiting places we know we love, and eating all the food.

As a result there may be less posts during this time, and they’re most likely to be the recipe posts for my food challenge which I have written ahead and scheduled.

So expect more posts about what I’ve been up to, on my return. In the meantime, make sure you’re following me on instagram, because that’s where I’ll be posting photos and stories during my trip.

And if you find me there because you read my blog here, please drop me a comment and let me know where you came to me from!

 

Learning Modern Calligraphy the Easy Way

By now you’ll know I’ve been taking an online calligraphy course for Modern Calligraphy, since the start of the year. I still have a module of this left, but I wanted to talk about it again now, since the new semester is now open for registration. If you have always wanted to learn modern calligraphy but haven’t known how the best way to do it is, where to go or what to do, I’m here to tell you THIS is the best way.

I’ve been learning through from a course run by Becca aka The Happy Ever Crafter. She runs the course online, in which the first module (learning your calligraphy drills) is totally free. This means you can get to grips with the basics before committing to anything. It gives you the chance to see whether you have the patience, skill and most of all the TIME to learn over the year, without parting with any cash.

And then even when you do have to pay for the subsequent modules, they’re not very expensive at all. This year she even allowed people to buy the whole course in one bulk payment if they wanted to, or just pick and choose and buy them individually as we got to them. They were also available at 50% off for a short period as we got to each module.

As it’s an online course, you need to print off your own workbooks. So from an expense perspective you’ll need to be able to do this. Or if you’re learning on iPad (which is also an option) your expense is purely the workbook itself. You then need to pick up paper, pens and tracing paper if you choose to use it. At the start of the course Becca tells you about different equipment you might want to use, what she uses, and where to buy the stuff. She also provides videos on each workbook to help you understand how best to use them.

Apart from the workbooks being amazing and easy to work through, she also offers communication through emails, and encourages you to take part in the community via a closed Facebook group and also setting up your own dedicated instagram account where you can interact with others taking the course via hashtags. (Mine is at https://www.instagram.com/lettersbygroggits/ I have to say, I was astounded at the level of community created via this course. You get so much encouragement and inspiration, not to mention confidence, by sharing your work and seeing the work of others.

By the end of the Drill section I was all in. My confidence had grown in leaps from week to week and I was ready to start writing letters. We were encouraged to write out what we thought the alphabet would look like, and then shown how to use the shapes we’d learned and practiced in the drills, to create the letters.

This is my before and after sheet, showing the difference between where I started and where I ended with the lower case letters. Quite the difference!

From here we learned upper case, numbers and symbols, joining the letters to make words, bounce styling and we’re currently learning how to flourish the words.

By setting periodic challenges we could put the letters together and see how far we’d come.

Using set words, and being encouraged to write them in ways we wouldn’t have thought of before.

Not only has this taught me that I CAN learn a new skill, I DO have the patience to slow down and concentrate on getting it right, and I have even a little amount of creativity in me, it’s also opened me up to a world of other creatives online and on instagram. The world of creative lettering.

I’ve started to move onto iPad lettering too, but this might take a little practice. But I’m apparently okay at little drawings too, so I’m enjoying practicing and sharing those.

If you feel like this is something you’d like to see if you’re good at, I’d encourage you to head over to The Happy Ever Crafter’s sign-up page and give her Show Me Your Drills module a try. It’s free, so you can’t lose out, and I guarantee you’ll fall in love! The module starts on October 1st, so you’ll have until then to sign up.

 

What I’ve Been Loving in August

Hi! Me again 🙂

I used to write monthly favourites, but who can honestly say they’ve loved something brand-new, every single month? Well, maybe you can, but I can’t. So I tend to write these ‘favourites’ posts as and when I have enough things to share with you. And August happens to be one of those months.

I’ll start with something I’ve been using since around March time. People moan a lot about the amount of ads bloggers and instagrammers post, but to be fair to them, if you saw something you wanted, you wouldn’t moan. They can’t offer something YOU specifically want every time, so just let the ones you’re not interested in go. And if you don’t trust their opinion, stop following them! (Rant over) If it hadn’t been for Maria J posting on instagram about the Lee Stafford Rainbow Shine Bubble Waver, I would never have found my perfect hair styling tool.

I have long, poker-straight, hair that I try to twist and bend into some kind of waves, but it’s stubborn and the curls would drop out unless I sprayed concrete fixing spray on it or spend hours curling and setting it. Enter this amazing bubble wand.

Not only does it look like it came from a Unicorn salon, but this waver is so easy to use and produces amazing beachy waves, every time I use it.

I have fine hair and find it only takes a maximum of 5 minutes to wave my whole head. It’s amazing, and I use it every time I wash my hair. It comes with a heat protection glove, which is great for accident-prone me. I bought an inexpensive travel pouch for it, on Amazon, which also doubles as a heat protecting mat, since the little stand on the wand does get pretty warm. I love this hair-styler so much, and I can’t believe I went without it for so long! Oh and it’s only around £40. Win!

To protect my hair, I also use the Lee Stafford Coco Loco Heat Protection Mist.

You’ll know, if you’ve been reading my blog for a while, that I’m a sucker for anything coconut scented. To find this heat protectant in this gorgeous coconut scent was such a bonus. It can usually be found for around £4-£6 depending on what deal it’s on, but I don’t think I’ve ever spent more than £4 on it. I spray this over my towel dried hair before I blow dry it. Then you’re supposed to spray it onto each section ahead of curling, but I find this too heavy for my hair. The light amount of spray I’ve been putting on my head ahead of drying it seems to be doing enough, and my hair isn’t suffering at all from the heat of the curling wand. I also find I can still smell this spray in my hair, right up until I wash it again a couple of days later. It’s subtle, not overpowering, and really pleasantly natural. I have found I get comments from people saying my hair smells nice, when I hug them (I sometimes hug people….)

Next is something I was given for my birthday, but I’d asked for it in the hope it would be good. I’ve heard a lot about Lancome’s Monsieur Big mascara, and though I don’t own it, it’s on my list of things to pick up in Sephora on my next trip to the States, because it’s slightly cheaper there. But they recently launched a waterproof version, and I thought it would be great for the Florida heat. I don’t generally get on with waterproof mascaras. They’re notoriously hard to remove and traditionally do ZERO for my lashes, leaving me with a massive removal issue and no pay-off.

This launched exclusively in Boots, though it might be available elsewhere now. They do a ‘midi’ size which I figured would be perfect for travel and since I don’t plan on using it every day, would mean less waste when it eventually dries out.

So, as I say, I was given this as a birthday present, and to date I’ve used it twice. And I am SO impressed.

Not only does this give me a lovely full, lengthened and fluttery lash-look, which is hard with my straight lashes, but it kept its curl all day. It doesn’t flake or run. I kept it on when I washed my hair and it didn’t run at all with much water and rubbing over my eyes. AND it was easy to remove using a Simple makeup wipe. It came off with very little issue, no rubbing and my lashes felt conditioned afterwards.

I’m so impressed, I can only hope that the non-waterproof version performs as well.

The last beauty item I’m talking about this month, is one I’ve used a couple of times, but again love it so much it’s worth mentioning.

I’ve spoken about the Glossier Generation G lipsticks before. They offer a matte, subtle and very comfortable wash of colour to the lips for a ‘blotted’ look. They can be built up nicely for more pigment, and wear off comfortably and evenly. I needed to pick up some more lip balm and eyebrow gel so I decided I’d get a new shade of Gen G whilst I was at it. I picked up this one in Cake.

The Glossier website is great in the way it shows how each shade of product will look on different, so I knew this shade would be subtle on me. But I hoped that it would be close to my natural lip shade and offer me a little ‘something’ when I’m looking a little dead in the mornings. And it does just that!

I’d call this a brown shade, with a little rose colour in there. I’ve used it twice, and though it’s very subtle, it really really add that pop to the lips that I sometimes need. It’s comfortable and can be built up too. I can also offer you 10% off your first Glossier order, if you wanted to buy one of these, by following this link http://bff.glossier.com/hCHG5 (I’m not being sponsored for any of this, but I do get some credit in my account if you use the link, which will help keep me in lip balms for a few more months!)

The final thing I’ve been loving this month is the new Ariana Grande album Sweetener.

I mentioned it in a past blog already, but I’m seriously in love with this album. I wasn’t too sure the first time I heard some of the songs, but now I can’t help but listen to it every single day. My favourites keep changing but I LOVE Goodnight n Go, God is a Woman and Breathin. If you like her past stuff, this has more of the vibe her Christmas & Chill EP had (apart from this isn’t about Christmas) and probably should win an award for some of the most annoying background noise samples in an album, but I still love it! I’m hoping I’ll get to see her when she tours this album!

And that’s what I’ve been loving this month. Have you tried any of these things, or heard Ariana’s new album? I’d love to hear your thoughts!

This Week I Have Been Mostly….

This week I have been mostly wanting to crawl into a hole, if I’m honest. I haven’t had the best of weeks mental health-wise, and it’s been hard enough getting out of bed, let alone actually wanting to do stuff or eat any food.

I go through periods like this, but I’ve been feeling fairly ‘off’ for around a month now. It’s been various different things that’s caused it, and I’m sure anyone I spend time around, friends, family, colleagues would say they hadn’t noticed any difference. I’m fairly good at hiding it. It’s my full-time profession, you know.

Other than feeling like a head-case, I had my birthday last week. I turned 35 – and before you assume, no that’s not why I’ve been feeling low. I enjoy getting older. I think I might struggle with 40, but that’s a way off for now.

I took the day off work, as I usually do for my birthday, and spent the day in my PJs, watching YouTube and then saw My Neighbour Totoro for the fist time. I really enjoyed it! Film 4 are currently having a month of Studio Ghibli films, and so I’m recording them all so I can watch the ones I’m interested in! We ate Chinese on my birthday evening, and enjoyed a relaxing evening in. It was exactly what I wanted, and needed.

The following day I was totally spoiled by my work colleagues, and they got me some amazing gifts. I’m a lucky girlie!

A couple of days after my birthday, I got a belated birthday treat – Ariana Grande released her 4th album.

I’ve been listening to it non-stop since, and I will say on first listen I wasn’t into all of the songs, but now I love them all. My favourite is Goodnight and Go, which takes some of Imogen Heap’s song of the same name, and makes it very Ariana. It’s stunning and makes me tear up every time I hear it! There are a lot of tracks about her past and current relationships, anxiety in general and some which speak to the tragic events at her concert in Manchester last year. She even made the final track ‘Get Well Soon’ to be 5:22 (the date of the attack) by adding 40 seconds of silence at the end. I always loved Ariana Grande but this album has cemented it even more. It feels more grown up, still fun, but a little more ‘sorted’.

This past weekend we watched A Quiet Place and really enjoyed it. Since I love film so much, a guy at work told me about an awesome app called Letterboxd (which is also a website) where you can rate and review every film you can imagine.

 

You can add them to your activity feed, which diarises when you’ve seen them, and you can add movies you want to see in the future to your watchlist. I find this function to be really useful because I’m always seeing trailers for films, or hearing about them, and then forgetting I wanted to see them! You can also follow people on the app, and this means you’ll see films other people watch, who might have similar tastes to you. It’s a great way to discover new movies! It’s also user-friendly and looks great so that makes it the kind of app you want to use. No, this isn’t a sponsored section – I just really it! If you have this app, or decide to download it, feel free to find and add me. I’m Groggits (of course!)

We’ve been continuing to plan our Florida trip, and 17th August saw Disney World’s first Halloween party of the year. Yes, in August! It’s barmy that they’re making them earlier and earlier every year, but the first party was sold out, so I guess there’s demand for it! But the coverage of the party looked great, and seeing all the Autumn decor up on Main Street USA has made me so excited to go back! We’ve even found more places we want to eat at, and I can see me being the size of a house when I return…. eek!

So that’s my little life-update for now. I’m very much ready for a proper holiday, and we’ve got a few exciting things to look forward to ahead of the holiday, so I’m hoping my mood will improve between now and then. Either way, I need to remind myself not to be too hard on myself.

Here’s to beating those obstacles.

It’s Ma Birthday!

Today’s my birthday, and I’m turning the big ‘ole 35. I’m pretty sure that means I now tick a different age box when I fill out forms.

It also happens to be World Calligraphy Day, which seems fateful as I have been learning calligraphy (and LOVING IT) since the start of the year!

Gary, SO generously got me an iPad and Apple Pencil as an early birthday present, a couple of months ago, and I’ve been playing around with it. Very recently I actually made something which I was pretty pleased with. If you follow my instagram accounts, then you’ll have seen this already (@lettersbygroggits and @groggits) but here’s what I made:

I used procreate for the lettering and Adobe sketch for the watercolour background. I’m looking forward to having more fun using these apps and my Pencil!

Anyway, today should be a day of SUPER laziness, and watching a lot of TV, if it all goes to plan. I usually take my birthday off work, so I can just bask in the overwhelming reality of getting older.

Here’s to another epic year of living!

This Week I Have Been Mostly….

And so the wonderful run of hot, sunny and dry weather continues. I’m totally loving this weather, though I could do with it being a little warmer in the day and a little cooler in the night. We were promised a thunder-storm on Friday which turned into about an hour of rain, which was much needed.

So, a couple of weekends ago, we headed to London’s Hyde Park to see Bruno Mars performing at the British Summer Time festival. I’ve gotta say, festival food has changed a lot. I actually looked forward to some food van noodles, but there wasn’t a noodle to be found. It was all artisan pizzas, chicken wings and vegan falafel. They had sold so many tickets it took us an hour to get to the front of the line for chips, and we’d chosen the shortest line to queue up at! They weren’t even that nice… But that wasn’t why we went.

Bruno was, of course, amazing. He always is! Gary got me some merch (I hate that word) when I got chilly, and now it’s too warm to wear the sweater I got, but I loved wearing it that night. I’ll crack it out again in a few months.

I also visited a launch of a new type of corporate Christmas even (Christmas in July!) and had a lovely evening with my bessie (who I’m lucky enough to work with!) drinking fresh mocktails and eating the most amazing calzone from The Calzone Kitchen. The tunes were banging, the sun was setting and it was nice to have some catch-up time!

This past weekend I visited the Cosgrove Craft Fair to see a friend’s stand. Apollo Creative, you may remember, made my Mum’s birthday present recently. I picked up a couple of bits for my home and a gift for my niece. Check Apollo Creative out on instagram!

We’ve been having some quiet weekends of late, since we’re trying to save some cash for our upcoming holiday, to Florida. We have a few more little trips lined up, but nothing major (from what I remember!)

I’ve also been thinking about how I want to ‘cover’ my holiday on my social media channels. I usually just post the odd photo when I’m away, since I’m taking a vacation and I want to be ‘off’ for the duration. But since we now have instagram stories and IGTV I was thinking I might do some videos, a bit like I did last year, of places I’m visiting, stuff I’ve bought etc. Do you think that’s something you’d like to watch? Obviously I’ll write some blogs on my return, too 🙂

That’s it for now. Do you have any exciting trips coming up? I’d love to hear about them!

Visiting The Allergy & Free-From Show

Every year The Allergy & Free From Show exhibit at the London Olympia in Kensington. I’d been once before a couple of years back, but thought I’d give it another go this year! Tickets are free and as well as the  Allergy and Free From show, you also get access to the Just V Show (vegetarian and vegan) and Love Natural Love You (natural lifestyle and skincare) areas.

Once we got into the show we picked up our lanyards. This year the show organisers have arranged it so everyone who has bought a ticket gets a lanyard with a barcode and their name on it. Then if you’re interested in finding out more about a brand at any booth, they just scan your barcode and the show organisers will pass on your details to them. I’m sure this is a GDPR move, but it seemed very simple and effective!

The first booth I noticed was Haymax. I worked with them a little while ago, letting you all know about their fantastic natural hay fever remedies! It was great to see them there.

By the time we had arrived, we were both pretty hungry so my focus was on finding something dairy-free to eat.

We tried a few samples on our way through the booths.

At Portabello Attic I tried I sample of their vegan Nutty Nutella cheesecake. It was really amazing. Gooey and buttery tasting, but lovely knowing it was totally vegan.

Then we spotted The White Rabbit Pizza Co who offered some vegan options. I love vegan pizza because the ingredients are usually more exciting than with standard pizza.

Gary tried this pizza which is due to come out soon, and is on a brand new base style. He said it was amazing!

I tried this vegan option and it was truly delicious. So flavourful and really yummy!

I have already looked and you can buy this brand in my local Sainsbury’s and Waitrose. I’ll be heading there soon to pick one up!

By this point I knew I needed something proper to eat, rather than samples. The only issue with this show, is that unless you want to fill up on samples (which won’t be suitable for every dietary need) or buy something from the standard permanent and over-priced cafes that line the Olympia (which don’t offer anything dairy free) then you’re pretty much stumped for food. There was a lovely looking vegetarian stand with salads and quiche but nothing suitable for me. But then we stumbled over Mahi Vegan Street Food.

I decided to go for the Mac N’Dawg and Gary got the V-Dawg, both seitan hotdogs with toppings. Gary’s had crispy onions, chopped pickles, mustard and ketchup. Mine had mac n’cheese, chives, crispy onions and ketchup (it was meant to have sriracha but I’m a wuss!) The staff were so nice, and really efficient.

Neither of us had has seitan before, but we both thoroughly enjoyed our hotdogs. So, So tasty and just what I needed!

But of course after you’ve had your hotdog, you need ice cream right? So off I trotted to Booja-Booja, a brand I’ve known for years but only recently tried their ice creams. The staff were so lovely, and served their deserts from a cute converted Tuk Tuk!

I went for a scoop of caramel pecan praline, and it was divine!

Despite it being a warm and busy show, I really enjoyed seeing what was on offer this time around. It’s so good seeing so much being offered generally for people with allergies, intolerances and alternative dietary choices.

Anyway, now I’m off to dream about that hotdog…..

Craft & Cleaver – or Not-So Clever…..

We love visited BBQ restaurants, and frequent Big Easy, Red Dog Saloon and Bodean’s fairly often when we can. So, I got really excited when I heard we were getting a ‘Brooklyn Style BBQ’ restaurant fairly locally to us, in Milton Keynes.

I read some of the opening reviews, which were mixed, but wanted to try for myself since I loved the look of the food.

We visited with friends on a Wednesday lunch time, so it was fairly quiet and it was just a few couples and some office-based traffic coming in.

The Atmosphere

We had a friendly welcome, and the smell inside was just right. BBQ and wood! The decor was lovely and I’m always comforted by the sight of squeezy sauce bottles on the table!

We were welcomed and seated, and had a look at the menu.

There’s a dedicated lunch menu, but we all chose from the main part of the menu as we were all quite hungry.

The Food & Drink

Two of us ordered the chargrilled lemonade which was home-made lemonade with a slight bbq taste to it. It was very tart at first sip but as the ice melted it became refreshing. I chose to have an Arnold Palmer (which is 50/50 iced tea and lemonade) It tasted fizzy to start with but then that went away. It shouldn’t be fizzy so that threw me to start with!

Two of us ordered burgers, one ordered a salad and another ordered a half rack of ribs.

My order was a Naked and Proud burger, which came with 50/50 fries (half sweet potato and half potato), coleslaw and pickles.

The burger was two patties with mustard and tomato relish. The burgers were nice, however there wasn’t enough sauce paired with the amount of meat, and as such you couldn’t taste the relish or mustard. The fries were very nice, with a tasty seasoning on them. I don’t usually enjoy sweet potato but these were lovely. The coleslaw didn’t have much flavour and the pickles were odd. I was expecting gherkins or cucumbers but I got two bits of celery and two small chunks of carrot. They didn’t taste vinegary, but had an asian flavour to them which I couldn’t pinpoint and I don’t think went with the rest of the food.

I tried some of the BBQ sauce from the table. It was a very mild sauce, almost watery with a more tomato flavour than I expected, but it wasn’t bad.

I was told the ribs were dry and the salad barely had any dressing on it.

Having paid quite a lot for this food, we expected a little more.

This was were the trouble happened. We paid for the whole bill on one card, and the waitress hadn’t noticed there was no paper in the card machine. Not knowing how these machines work, we didn’t realise we had already been charged once when we were asked to put our payment through again, since she thought it hadn’t worked the first time. When the receipt didn’t print the second time, the waitress realised and told us we might have been charged twice.

She spoke with her manager and asked to take out details. We were to then check our account and if the amount had come out twice, come back to get a refund. We were told the manager was stressed, and so she couldn’t deal with it herself. We had noticed the managed wandering around looking stressed already, throughout our visit.

We checked, it had come out twice, and so we returned. On our return a couple of days later, our original waitress recognised us, apologised for the inconvenience and got her manager. The manager, and who I now assumed was the assistant manager who we’d seen walking around previously, stood for some time at the till point. We had shown them a text from our bank showing the two full amounts coming out of the account (including tip) and also shown them the recipt we were given for the second transaction. For some reason they decided to refund us in cash, even though our original transaction had been on card, so they had to split the refund between two tills, since I don’t think they had enough float to give a cash refund at that time. We were stood around for about 10 minutes waiting, whilst the waitress made small talk with us.

When we were handed our refund, we pointed out that we had also paid a tip on both transactions (and not a small one) and that they hadn’t refunded that. The manager told us point-blank there was nothing she could do. At no point did she apologise, or offer us any other kind of compensation for the original error, for us having to come back to get our refund, for the wait, or for us not getting our tip back. We were obviously an inconvenience to her day, and she clearly just wanted the issue dealt with and gone. I was FUMING.

I have since complained to Craft and Cleaver and they have confirmed our service should have been refunded and offered to refund it or give us some credit towards drinks on a future visit. We declined both. Needless to say this was a sour experience, and we won’t be returning. They also said they had taken steps to properly train their staff on refunds going forward which is a step in the right direction.

Incidentally, completely unprovoked, a friend told me about her bad experience there for her birthday dinner. Wrong orders cooked, inconsistent portion sizes, too little food for the cost, and plastic found in the food with no apology and no compensation.

It’s such a shame, that something that could have been so good ended up being pretty darn bad.