LAAANNNNNNDIIIN!

May 29th, 2010

Phew! It has been a busy week. Thursday was a crazy day. Pink Sky had to go to London for an evening meeting with our Spanish client. Last time Mark went, he met the client in the City of London Club, which was a ridiculously posh venue where suits must be worn, waiters are on wheels (they make no sound as they glide around the building) and everyone drinks whisky and smokes cigars at 11am. This time round, we agreed to meet in the West End, so assumed that the venue would be somewhere more sublime, like Starbucks for example.

With this in mind, I put on a flowery dress and some trainers to cultivate a Lily Allen/arty/designer-y look. mark was wearing jeans with a shirt, jacket and some Converse style pumps. More about this later.

We got to London for about midday and parked in Duke Street. We lost no time in exploring Selfridges, Heal’s, the world’s biggest Paperchase, China Town and Soho. A huge fascination for me was an exhibition that is all around London at the moment in aid of saving elephants. There are large resin elephants positioned in the streets, in parks, everywhere. They are all decorated by famous people/designers and being sold at Sotherby’s in aid of elephants. There was a shop where you could buy small ones but I could only afford a £5 unpainted mini one, so I shall have to think carefully about what I put on it. I had great fun ‘spotting’ them though and took lots of photos.

We ate a Lebanese lunch (mine was a chapatti with olives and haloumi cheese – yum!) and then the phone rang. It was our client, suggesting we meet at the Goring Hotel near Victoria. I didn’t think much of this as I had never heard of the Goring. We carried on browsing.

At 3:30, we thought we ought to perhaps locate this hotel, so I looked on my iPhone at google maps. “Oh, it appears to be near Buckingham Palace?” I said. Mark replied “Oh he said it was by Victoria….? Ah. Yes, they are fairly close together….” As it turned out, the Goring was more than a little posh. It was very near to Buckingham Palace indeed and was massive.

I walked through the door trying not to look intimidated by the doorman in a bowler hat and stood still in the hallway gaping at the chandeliers, marble floor, sweeping staircases and the sheer size of the place. We walked into a very posh bar with leather chairs, sofas and lots of very posh looking people in suits. I felt a little bit conscious of my Rocket Dog trainers and Mark whispered in my ear “Just look like we belong here”. So he said to the lady at the door “I am just looking for a *insert name of client*”. “Ah yes sir, help yourself”. We found him on the back terrace, engaged in another meeting which was running late, so we decided to have a walk around the garden and prepare our notes.

When we finally sat down inside for the meeting (although it was a warm day, the man had come from Spain and was feeling cold!), we were bombarded with a constant stream of amuse-bouche ranging from cheese straws, to olives, to quails eggs, to asparagus quiche!

The meeting went well. The client liked the designs and the fact that we had got into Design Week with it. He said that an art expert friend had said that it was very Mondrian which was a relief, as I had been influenced by De Stijl, which was hugely influenced by Mondrian.

He then mentioned that he had a few other people approaching him with different propositions and would we be interested? We seem to have become part design, part Spanish food importers but at least you can say we are diverse!!

Next Roberto arrived, a Spanish deli meat manufacturer. Whilst his English was excellent, he didn’t quite understand the technicalities of what we were asking him. Our other client was able to translate luckily and all was well. However, the meeting went on for an almighty three hours! I had taken a tranquiliser in the morning (which I have been prescribed for potentially stressful situations) the side effects of which are ‘drowsiness’. Having walked for several miles around London already, by 8:30pm (with the meeting still not over) I was wiped out.

We finally got home around midnight and then had to go straight back to work the next day for two more meetings and the University degree show, which was excellent. I am a little tired……………..