Written by: James
Let the games begin...
The end of our Job Swap week meant one thing, PARTY TIME! Everyone had gathered delicious food and drink from Bristol's St Pauls, Easton and St Nick's ready to be devoured by their co-workers over the course of a sunny Friday afternoon. All the teams rushed about, busily preparing their sections. The St Nick's group were secretly shoving bits and bobs into the oven whilst cutting out the remaining few flags. The Easton group were draping beautiful cloth over tables and piling brightly coloured sweets on top of it. The St Paul's group set about lighting the BBQ and assembling a coconut (pineapple!) shy out of some old pallets and the Harbourside team were doing something with metre-long cinnamon sticks???
The dinner bell rang at 12.15 on the dot and everyone stood back - as if on a cookery competition when the time runs out - quietly impressed at their own achievements and ready to discover everyone else's!
Offering number one came in the shape of a 30 ft long display of nibbles from 34 different countries (enter the flags!).
We saw zebra and ostrich biltong, various homous', an unfilled cheong fun (Chinese cannelloni) - which we later found out should have been served warm, filled with prawns and in light soy sauce, not cold, shrivelled and raw - as well as rye bread from Germany, Manchego from Spain, kimchi from South Korea and 26 other things from 26 other countries.
We then moved outside to a Jamaican Rum Bar and Little India...
The sun was shining, the seagulls were singing and the incense was burning as we set about dancing to reggae and sampling the decadent sweets sourced from Easton's Sweetmart.
"It felt good putting my HR hat on for the day and then exploring so many cuisines. Who else can say they've sampled food from over 34 countries in one lunch hour?" (Tung - Ingredients Guru) There was a mound of crispy pakoras (some tinged with the firey scotch bonnet chilli (a roulette, if you will) and crispy puris to fill with tamarind chutney, bombay mix, chickpeas and green chutney.
"We've all enjoyed flexing our creative spirit" (Toby, Voucher Redemptions)
As hands began to be henna-ed, we moved over to the Jamaican corner and gnawed on jerk pork and chicken off the BBQ with pineapple salsa (the shell of the pineapple was used as a prop in the 'pineapple' shy) and rice 'n' peas, padded out with coleslaw, salt fish patties, plantain chips and collon's (a green tea biscuit-thing) to finish.
Cocktails were mixed (a choice of the old classic 'dark 'n' stormy, as well as an un-thought-through concoction of pureed lychees and vodka, neat, all beaten together with a metre long sugar cane), shapes were thrown, hands (and legs!) were painted, sugar cane sucked, the party was booming...
Even the Boss Man enjoyed it!
Then for the presentation... The Harbourside team were asked to discover everything there was to know about the spice trade.
"It was a great opportunity to see what Bristol had to offer and explore the capabilities of my co-workers" (Andrea - order processor) But how to make it interesting??? We thought maybe they would dress as pirates and race around the warehouse like a scene from a community centre theatre group! Maybe a song, maybe a dance, we didn't know. Instead, the presentation was the good old informative kind.
As Adam finished his lunch, his teammates gave a thorough rundown of all things spicy in Bristol's history, with beautifully bordered (those cinnamon quills had us all guessing) displays! And how was it Andrea? "Though the history of the spice trade in Bristol is minimal*, it was still fascinating to learn how the discovery of continents was fueled by trade itself". *maybe we didn't think their direction through very well?!
As the bar ran dry we pulled the day to a close. Job Swap Week was done, and it was a success! Tung's smile says it all!
And the winner is... we all placed our votes as to who we thought had tried the hardest, thought about it the most, been the most creative. The votes were counted and verified and...
TEAM ST PAULS WERE THE WINNERS! (aka Robyn, Josh & Jess). By what some would call a landslide, it was almost unanimously agreed that the coordinators of the rum bar, bashment music and barbecued jerk chicken should win the prize!
Cava-clad and happy, we then filed out and headed to Moor Beer (a new brewery just round the corner!) for an evening's relaxation. Until next year!
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