It is lovely to discuss the new color of a wall or the application of our logo across the cloak room, and think of many other ways to give our venues a facelift. Lovelier still, is to see the despair on Tom’s and Dermot’s faces when they have to take yet another decision regarding electrical switches, or light bulbs. Schadenfreude, I’m sorry, but it’s just so funny!

I will miss all this very much – I decided to stick with the light bulbs and paint, and am going back to Brazil to pick up my career as an architect where I left it about two years ago.

It has been a wonderful experience both to live in London and to work at Cavendish Conference Venues, which was finalized in grand style yesterday evening with our office Christmas party: a treasure hunt through the city of London followed by the spiciest of curries in Brick Lane.

I will take this opportunity to say thanks to our clients for having kept us very busy this year. And most of all, here is a big thank you to my colleagues – you are fantastic!!

Every year I attempt to outsmart the rest of the population, and take great pride in starting my Christmas shopping around June. All throughout summer and autumn I am alert: no potential present escapes my avid eye, and my stocking up on gifts strongly resembles compulsive hoarding.

But no matter how hard I try, disaster always drops by last minute: by December the bought clothes don’t fit anymore, or a very similar gift was given by somebody else in the meantime, or the chocolate grew mould, or…

So this year, once again, I will be one to add to the crowds. See you there. Merry Christmas!

Therefore, big was my excitement when this morning I woke at 6am and peeking out of the window saw a white street – snow has arrived in London! Instantly awake, I got ready as soon as I could and rushed outside just to feel that blissful sensation of being the very first to step into a beautiful unblemished layer of snow…

And then reality kicked back in. Snow is cold. And snow is wet. And by the time you arrive at work, all the beauty has melted and it’s just a slushy grubby mess everywhere. Guess Santa doesn’t exist after all.

Being an imported item that has happily adopted the English way of living, I have noticed in myself a very English tendency to whinge about the weather. Lesson in culture well learned, but I am surely starting to annoy myself with the amount of times I manage to exclaim ‘it’s cold!’ in a day.  

That it’s cold out there we all know a bit too well by now. And that the days are frighteningly short (HOW does it start getting dark at 4pm?!) can’t possibly have escaped anybody’s attention either. So I won’t even mention this unfortunate course of events – I will concentrate on the bright side of all this grief.

And that, in the London Conference Scene, can only be one thing: Conference High Season! It seems the end of Daylight Saving Time makes everybody realize that the year is almost over, but a lot still has to be done before Christmas – so it’s meetings, presentations and training days all around. It is a pleasure to see our diaries full of bookings and our venues full of people!

One tip if you are considering having an event in the High Season next year: book early, as the space goes quick, and at this time of year last minute doesn’t do the trick!

There must be better ways to do that… but how far are we willing to go? Why don’t we move our desks and phones to the kitchen, where it is hot anyway thanks to the ovens and stovetops? Give each delegate a thermo-blanket and a matching funky hat to wrap themselves up during the conference? At the refreshment breaks, hand out the much wanted coffees and teas only after a series of 15 lunges has been performed by each delegate, to generate heat from movement?  Or even, just go into collective winter hibernation, and get back to hold conferences once spring arrives? Spend that whole long winter sipping wine in front of a fireplace… All in name of ecology!

I started thinking of this subject because we are looking for new little treats to surprise our clients with. It is always wonderful to get a little thank you present, and so we have for many years now tried to please our clients with goodies, from wine to personalized pencil holders. Sometimes it is difficult to stay innovative, so we are always on the lookout for interesting new gifts.

This time, we found a delicious organic bar of chocolate, which is not the most original thing on earth, except that this one made us laugh, a lot: it is wrapped in shocking pink paper, with a drawing of a big pig snout, and the name of the chocolate is… FAT PIG! It has some instructions on how to eat it as well (“fast, before another fat pig grabs it off you!”) and we overall found it very funny. Looks like the perfect new little treat, just to put a smile on people’s faces.

But it is tricky: those who happen to be in a bad mood, might get highly insulted and never want to come back to that Fat Pig Conference Company. But for humour’s sake, I think it is worth the risk!

London is definitely not a good place for the avid car aficionado. Lack of parking spots, expensive congestion charges, and LOTS of traffic make commuting by car an expensive, tiresome and overall dreadful experience. And then we’re not even talking about environmental issues yet. Even for those who love their car more than their new born baby, working in Central London, you’re better off looking for alternatives.

A popular option is rail transport: tube and train. These are usually extremely crowded, and I always feel like a country-girl as soon as I set foot in the stations, getting stressed and wound up simply from the amount of people crawling around. For some reason, when I’m in there I can’t stop thinking of ant colonies.

I usually take the bus myself, as I live in one of those far far away neighbourhoods where even the nearest tube station is a bus ride away. To pray every day no road works are taking place is part of the ritual. The bus does take quite a while even without the road works, but on the other hand, I can usually sit back and relax with my book, until the bus drops me off at the door of the workplace.

But overall, the winner of my best-way-to-get-to-work-award, by far, is the bicycle. Surprisingly, I don’t see many people using them to come to our conference venues. Has to be said I don’t have one myself – I consider my house way too far and the London climate way too cold – but I truly admire those who do cycle to work every day. It is a marvellous invention: one doesn’t pollute the environment, bikes are very cheap to buy, maintenance is close to zero, it’s entertaining and on top of all you get in shape!

But as all good things, even cycling has a downside. A BIG downside. It makes you sweat. Can you imagine sitting in a cosy conference room, all day long, next to a very admirable but oh so sweaty colleague? Hmm, ok, I admit… I am suddenly very happy I don’t see more delegates arriving in their cycling gear. But here goes an idea for the local councils: installing public showers and changing rooms next to the Boris Bike stations might just be what our London Cycling Scheme needs!

We have, almost every day, a certain amount of delicious, healthy and fresh food that we don’t want; others want delicious, healthy and fresh food, that they don’t have. The equation seems simple, right? Wrong. After a week of e-mailing and making phone calls, contacting many charities to find out if we could make anybody happy with a free meal, I realised that, due to health and safety regulations, it is actually impossible for charities to accept and redistribute food that isn’t wrapped and does not have a use-by date written on it.

Now, our food is all fresh and prepared on site, which is why it is so fantastic in the first place (I know, modesty is not my forte). Obviously it isn’t wrapped and doesn’t have a use-by date on it! It does make one wonder. Health and safety regulations need to exist and be complied with, evidently: who does not want to be healthy and safe? But in some situations I think that the rules fail to remember their original purpose. Or, as Sir Francis Bacon put it, “the remedy is worse than the disease”.

With pain in my heart I conclude that we have to continue throwing our food in the bin.

There is, nonetheless, a downside to all this deliciousness:  Many days we have a big food surplus, which painfully ends up in the bin. But this is bound to change! We are looking into possibilities of redistributing the surplus food through charities that work with disadvantaged people in the community. If you have any experience with this kind of initiative, tips or advice, please do let us know!

We’ll keep you up to date, more news on this topic to follow soon!