To whom it may concern
Today our little but loud family of five visited your establishment, This was an impromptu trip following a disastrous day at Tkmax and not quite soft play. The consolation prize for our rather disheveled children was cookies and hot chocolate in your cafe.
Please don’t think you are always our last resort, we love your Christmas displays and also enjoy a turn through your aisles to look at cute shabby chic storage and name magnets. We don’t visit the plants Im afraid, for a reason that will soon become clear….
I’d like you to know, it was us, or rather our 3 year old who plucked that large lemon from your £50 pot on the cafe floor, but before you send in the troops allow me to explain….
Tkmax was a hastily decision, one made in desperate need, I wanted clothes and it was raining… We forgot the pushchair and the youngest was screaming before I even reached the clearance section. After running around the store (my husband after the children) we accepted defeat and decided to go to a soft play centre….. It’s the last day of the Easter holidays you see and shopping just isn’t fair on anyone.
We trooped to the car and made our way to a center we haven’t visited before. Outside were two women having an altercation, cigarettes in hand, they were shouting at one another while a child ran between them near the busy road. Ever so politely pushing past them, I send my husband to investigate the play area. He returned quickly and announced £15 for three children to be squeezed into a ball pit wouldn’t be any easier than our store visit earlier…. We relented and decided on you instead, a haven for the middle classes…..
Unfortunately, in the excitement of not quite soft playing, our middle child had an accident….so, in arriving husband promptly took him to clean up while i carried the screaming 18 month around promising him cookies soon …. Your staff were lovely, trying to make him smile, and I willed him to respond, he cried some more…. I really don’t understand why….. Except maybe, you know, he’d spent the morning in tkmax and an hour in the car…. He wanted nothing more than to run about your centre, I couldn’t let that happen.
We headed to the cafe. Now, I’d like you to inform the customers who were present that I’m a blogger, my photo taking was not a sign of a neglectful mother, just a Instagram mom wanting to get the cookie angle just right. Yes, I saw those eye rolls, yes I know my child needs a wetwipe and the eldest is slurping her drink…. But please try and understand….. Not one of them is crying!!!!
During our cookie binge middle boy told us proudly that he wanted to pick a lemon from your gorgeous lemon trees….. We distracted him with hot chocolate and said No firmly….. We then enjoyed five mins of gentle chatter before the youngest decided he’d had enough. We went to leave.
Now, I have waitressed before and, I’m always careful to stack the dishes and remove crumbs from the floor before leaving a cafe, it’s only fair…. My husband, also contentious, wanted to ensure all sticky fingers were wiped before anyone went near anything shabby chic….
Unfortunately there are two of us and three children….. Somewhere between plate stacking, face wiping and finger scrubbing Roo grabbed that lemon!
I know we should have come to tell you, in fact I said it loudly several times because I didn’t want to seem like a disinterested mum…. I’d already had eye rolls….. But the plant was £50 and we had shunned the £15 soft play…. It was a rather large lemon (I snapped a pic as we marched Roo to the exit) it may well have fallen off before to long anyway, but I’m ashamed I didn’t inform you what had happened…. The eye rolly crowd probably told you about the slummy family who left it there, in the pot, all alone….. But we didn’t…. We were too broke and too mortified…
I’ve been thinking about it since and I want to say a big sorry, on behave of Roo! Who did not have any jelly for desert tonight.
Regards
Emily