Tis the morning after the night before and I am safely back on Edinburgh soil almost in one piece, although my hands look like I have been into battle from the cruel but beautiful Rosa Rugosa and Bridget (the transit van) has a large penis drawn into the dirt on her side door... yes we have been to Glasgow.
I was very honored to be asked to do the flowers for the National Hotel Awards which takes place in the Thistle Hotel in Glasgow's busy city centre. It is organised by PDF Events and attracts nearly 500 hoteliers, chefs and journalists from all over this beautiful country. Tori, Nick, Erik and I were given 25 candelabra and the challenge of making them stand out in 'The Grand Ballroom' which is about the size of a small country. We set to work, spurred on by the oohs and aaahs coming from guests in the hotel and passers by as we constructed our 25 master pieces. Filled with beautiful spring greenery, sweet avalanche, grandprix and coolwater roses, pale pink stocks with beautiful rambling roses wrapping around the base when in position they took your breath away.
We were kindly invited to go to the award ceremony so we donned our Oscar outfits and mingled with the Creme de la Creme of the hospitality world, the atmosphere was brilliant and you could tell for the people in the running for an award that it was a fairly momentous night. At the last minute I was asked to present a couple of the awards, I can't remember which ones exactly as I was concentrating so hard on not falling over or even worse grabbing the microphone and entering into a hearty acceptance speech for an award given to someone else but it was really fun and I felt like the Queen and managed to make it back to my seat with my dignity in tact and my dress firmly where it was meant to be and not tucked into my knickers.
Being part of a large event such as this is a real eye opener. There are so many teams of people working around and with each other and each team has a leader and each leader manages their gang in a different way and thus gets different results.
This weekend I saw many different approaches to 'leadership' as I suppose you would call it, from a strict brisk approach to a more friendly encouraging angle. I enjoy learning about the subtle ways to bring the best out of people and to boost the camaraderie between the folk who help you- I'm pretty lucky as the people who helped me this weekend are the best, I am so grateful, thank you my amazing friends. Speaking of which I made a new friend in Glasgow called Paddy, he helped me dismantle all my flowers and made me laugh a lot when usually I am close to tears during the horrible process, I hope he might be tempted to join us on our next Tattie Rose adventure.
4 days until the launch party... hold onto your horses x
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