Employee Appreciation Month

At the London Centre November has three significant events that ‘FEED’ into each other. First, this month is ‘Employee Appreciation Month’.  At the ICLC, that means chocolates and other gooey goodies as we have no on-site store wherein employees can claim their rewards.* In the accompanying photo you see Claire enjoying the 2nd of her ‘appreciation’ appetisers, a delightful croissant from London’s best café, the Café Forum on Gloucester Road.

Is Café Forum even making appreciative bags?

Second, we celebrate Thanksgiving with an all-day smorgasbord of unadulterated plain and chocolate hobnobery that leaves bellies aching for the evening feast of turkey, mashed potatoes, veggies and chocolate mousse in Guinness [an old Puritan favourite]. Belts now loosened, we waddle right into ‘Bake Week’ at the end of the month, a week in which staff, lecturers, and students bake goodies for a worthy charitable cause. Claire can be seen in the photo well into her training for the excesses of November. She is so far, and today is just 8 November, ahead of her two EAM competitors, Sunshine Sarah in San Diego and Mother Heather, in the race to benefit from the charitable cause of the term, namely a three day spa recovery weekend in Buckinghamshire. Well into the lead, her points score almost insurmountable**, the only impediments to Claire winning the spa weekend are that she might blow up first and/or she won’t be allowed to wear her fashionable Charlton Athletic FC hair clips. Spas do have standards after all.

* At last week’s staff meeting the Director had to reject the staff request that jewellery be added to the list of ‘appreciations’. Police were summoned to disperse the staff sit-in at 11pm that evening.

** So waif-like that she is almost invisible, Elsie was disqualified from the competition.

-Bill