This Friday we will be heading back to Digbeth Dining Club, first of the New Year, finest street food in Birmingham and all round happy place. But. Last week I was hopeful, and panic-buying teapots more to calm the nerves than because I actually believed the Beast would not be back. And yet here we are, and here is willow pattern teapot with a gilt finish.
The van is still not on our drive. He is up in Leicester, with his engine out on a rack and our hopes strewn messily around him. Without wishing to sound negative; it doesn’t look terribly promising.
So because nothing short of actual zombies will stop us trading at Digbeth this weekend we have been working on a backup. While one of the Jabberwocky’s most characteristic features may well be a handsome green VW, we have invested in a less handsome green gazebo as a temporary substitution, and last Saturday carted it into the back garden to work out how you erect a gazebo, and what the back up plan would actually look like.
There is a knack to putting up awkward tents. We were in the process of mastering this when one of the naff little plastic hinges splintered and shot off to do its own thing in the grass. The roof support it had been holding swayed at us. The back up plan is not supposed to require a back up plan. We continued to put the thing together, because broken support or not it would be the only chance we had to test our setup. After much aesthetic table rearranging we can probably live with the result, although we will have to accept that there will be no tea.
We then disassembled it, and another piece snapped. I was already not terribly convinced by what the advert claimed was the superior 100% heavy duty steel frame, but this further suggested that we may not be onto a winner. Emails were dispatched, a replacement was delivered, accompanied by reassurances that they had never encountered anything similar in their long and successful history and had always found their customers to be heartily satisfied, as one would after a delicious meal, for example. I’m paraphrasing a little.
The replacement is now lying, in its box, on the other other side of the room. I’m optimistically assuming that this one will be just fine, so we will wait and see what Friday brings. Of course there is still time for the Beast to return, but now that I am 5 teapots better off I’m resigned to toasting in a tent.
It does not dampen my excitement for Digbeth though. The twittersphere has been quacking about it for weeks, and there is a genuine feeling of being part of something special. We will see friends again, get to try their food and test any new menu additions as well as being able to revel in the feeling that people actually like what we do. It will be more stressful without the Beast, colder and more complicated as well, but it’s a challenge. One more hurdle we will have overcome. I’m tempted to say “nothing else can possibly go wrong”, just to see what happens next.
Good luck! Looking forward to hearing all about it.