24 May 2014

Collett Park, Coffee and Community!


Well, here I am working away on the new website for The Collett Park Festival, that I offered to do for free, as a part of my contribution to the Shepton Mallet community. I did promise, when I resigned, that I would use my social media skills and communication knowledge to help this town regenerate. I've already created a website for Shepton Mallet Shops, which you can look at here. Tonight, all alone in my shop, with the lights on low, I am building a website for Collett Park Festival, which is going to open with a free musical concert at 7pm on Friday June 13th! You can look at the new website here, hope you like it. I am getting so excited about it!

Anyway, the lights are dim and the rain is pouring down and I look up to see a shadowy figure in the doorway who looks almost as if he is going to bed down for the night, he is wearing a mac, has an extremely long beard, like a wizard, a very large black umbrella and a stick and he is looking into a plastic yellow and white carrier bag and rummaging around, hunched over concentrating and rummaging and looking more and more suspicious!

Eventually, I decide that I am carefully going to go up to him and ask him, quietly, 'What are you doing?'. He looks up at me, in a lovely way and shows me some 'Then and Now' postcards of Shepton Mallet. He tells me that he has to visit the places on the postcards as that is what he likes doing. So, even though it's dark and raining, he goes off and matches the pictures in the postcards, to the pictures in real life and I invite him to pop in after he has finished for a hot chocolate and brownie, on the house, even though we are closed, just because.

He's in here now chatting away over his hot chocolate and a brownie, telling me all about his adventures in Glastonbury and Street and how he missed his bus and had to get a lift back to Shepton Mallet in a police car. I asked him if he had absconded from an old people's home but he explained that they actually let him come back quite late and that he would never stay in an old people's home that wouldn't let him stay out late. He asked me how old I thought he was and I guessed 80 years old, then I was really worried I had gone too high but then he said that he's 86! Phew. He's a sprightly thing for that age, walking all around Glastonbury and Street.

I love having a cofffee shop and being in the centre of the community and meeting the people that we do.

12 May 2014

Gluten Free Awareness Week UK


Gluten-Free Awareness Week, From 12th May to 18th May 2014!

We are celebrating this event by offering more flavours than ever before in our Shepton Mallet Shop! Today, I have just finished baking some absolutely delicious Blueberry Gluten-Free and Dairy-Free Muffins. I've worked hard on perfecting our Gluten-Free recipes, our cakes do not taste dairy or gluten-free. In fact in Shepton Mallet, all our cakes are Gluten and Dairy-Free! 

I really enjoy seeing the look on people's faces as they ask what Gluten-Free or Dairy-Free options we have available and they actually have a choice and it's not just one token cake.

Coeliac UK are the charity that are promoting this Awareness week, part of their campaign is to ensure that supermarket chains commit to stocking the essentials you need, so that you don't need to go all over the place for your weekly shop! 

We have a massive range of Gluten-Free goods available to you, that we can order in for you from either of our shops, so if it's important to you to support the independents, please let us know what you are finding it hard to find and we will get it! Just pop into either of our shops and tell us exactly what you are looking for.

In our Enfield shop we provide a range of ready wrapped grab and go snacks that are great for Coeliacs, or those on a dairy-free diet and in our Shepton Mallet shop, we have ready wrapped snacks available, as well as handmade, home baked artisan Gluten-Free and Dairy-Free Cakes!

We hope to stock these cakes in our Enfield branch soon.

Out of interest, what would your favourite Gluten-Free cake be? Please let me know by commenting here.

Have a great Awareness Week 2014!