Back to basics, London again

A few thank yous to a lot of different people rather than a big, subject, post.

I've called this back to basics as I'm remembering the initial idea for this blog; people who do their job with a smile; who bring something extra to the job and their day thereby making your day all the better.

So first of all, to Ann-Marie at Volvo in Swiss Cottage.  Thank you for always welcoming your customers with such a friendly chat and making them feel like they're coming over to a friend's rather than getting their car serviced or repaired.  

You always make it feel like there's time to sit down, have a natter and coffee.  Excellent, thanks.  

(This is where I would have put the 'thumbs up' but as of the last post, we're dropping that from the blog unless people want them back?).

picture courtesy
www.allinlondon.co.uk/images/

Next a couple of thanks without pictures for the moment but hopefully they'll get their own posts in due course.

To Rosey the hygienist who manages to make me smile and laugh while scraping my teeth. Thank you.  I'm hoping I might feature her in a later post with her lovely smiling face.

To the two armed police outside the Chinese Embassy on Portland Place the other day who were smiling and laughing with about twenty nursery school children walking past with their teachers.

And to Ellias of David's Deli Garden.  Ellias and his brother, Sam, run David's in West Hampstead and have now opened a branch in Praed Street.  I bumped into him in the Castle Chemist in Cricklewood Lane and was so enjoying chatting and catching up, forgot to think of the blog and getting a picture of him but he and his brother definitely deserve a post (see RNIB Black Lion Pub Quiz post here read-for-rnib-pub-quiz-thanks-and-photos), so again hope to feature them in a proper post with photos in due course.

Now to the last thank you of this post, it's to Le, Nba and Nimah of the Sensation Café in Fitzrovia.

Lunch hour midweek in the West End of London is fairly manic in all eateries, particularly places doing fast takeaway food for people in offices.  

However, you walk into the Sensation and you are greeted by three beaming smiles and calm descends. 

Le is behind the counter making up the food and taking the orders.  I had a seriously wicked Báhn mi (a Vietnamese sandwich in a baguette).

Lovely, (shy), Nimah was behind him on drinks and I had a good latte.  I think she thought I was mad taking their photos!

and then Nba (I hope I've got all your names right), is everywhere, serving, clearing, smiling and making sure everything's as it should be.  

An oasis of calm (good food) and smiles in the middle of London.  What can be bad?!

So thank you to everyone above and thumbs up for making all our (London) lives that bit better.

Do you want to say thank you to anyone?  Well this is the place to do it.

If you would like to write a post to thank someone or tell us something nice that happened just get in touch and we would love to hear from you and to spread the thanks.  You don't have to know how to do the formatting and stuff, we'll help you with all that.  We just need some words and preferably some nice smiley photos.  (don't forget to ask if you can take them).  This blog is for you, somewhere for you to have your say.  Thanks.

London, New York and back again

Well a happy 2014 to all and sorry this post is a little late, but between myself and everyone else having the flu lurgy the last few weeks there hasn't been much time to sit in front of a computer.  But late or not, a smile is a smile is smile!

So take your mind back to before Christmas, and the man and myself were taking a quick trip to New York to visit the family.  I was organised, I'd bought our train tickets, our plane tickets, organised cars, apartments, dinners, lunches, nothing was left to chance but, thank you Heathrow Connect, you managed to put a spanner in the works before our trip even started.

To get to Heathrow Airport now from London most people get the Heathrow Express from Paddington Station but it's much cheaper, if you get the ordinary train which takes about five minutes longer and makes some  stops along the way, (a similar operation to getting the alternative train to the Gatwick Express).  We were at Paddington in plenty of time for our train, but there seemed to be a lot of confusion among the staff as to where our actual train was.  Then we were told to run, it was coming in to platform 12 now and leaving almost immediately.  We ran (with our bags) only to find no train.  Twenty-five minutes later, (we're now getting anxious about our check in time at Heathrow), and we're told there is a fault on the line and not only is our train cancelled but so are all the others.


We run (again with our luggage....) to the booking hall to try and change our train tickets to Heathrow Express ones, (you can't do this on the train), and it was here, meeting Brian, that everything started to go right.

Brian managed to take the stress of it all away and deliver our upgraded tickets with a lovely smile to send us on our way.  So Brian, a big thank you and thumbs up.

Now we only had five days in New York and 99% of our time was taken up with friends and family which was lovely but we wanted to do one NYC thing; since it was fairly sleety and snowy, it wasn't going to be a wandering around thing so we decided on the Metroplitan Museum of Art.

This museum is incredible in its collections but, because of its sheer size, you have to be quite organised, (there is that word again), about what you're going to see.  We only had a couple of hours so using one of their half day suggested itineraries that looked fabulous, I took about one third of the suggested rooms and mapped out a route for our visit.

Upon arrival, because of a Christmas tree in a hall, the "route" didn't quite work but thanks to the lovely, helpful and smiling Gina, not only did we get back on track but she was able to "edit" our itinerary to make it even better.

So, Gina, thank you (from the British tourists around the 9th of December) and our thumbs up .

Then it was back to London, and the madness of work and life in the run up to Christmas. 

Now, for the presents, I hadn't been that organised and so come Christmas Eve, I had to go out shopping as extra family were coming and it was my first chance between the office etc.

Swiss Cottage was mad that day, with shoppers behaving like it was the end of the world and food was never going to be sold again.  Staff in shops were frazzled and barely able to keep up with the tills but, among all this frenetic behaviour, there was Hollie in Boots.

Hollie was totally in the spirit of the moment and was having fun whether people were ready for it or not.  She was a ray of sunshine on a truly horrible weather and shopping day.  So Hollie, thank you and a thumbs up  from me and the other shoppers you made laugh.

As I said at the beginning of this post, apologies for the lateness of these thank yous and we have a guest post that's been waiting to be published for a few weeks now but for the same reasons is also running late.  Watch this spot and you should be getting something soon from a lovely lady, half of R.C. Bridgestock, the author.

Thanks again for reading, may 2014 be kind to you and if you come across any nice smiles or service, do please send us a post.