grasshopper

Mercury Awards...

noreply@blogger.com (grasshopper) — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 12:40:00 +0000

For every industry there is an awards ceremony and just as the movie business has the Oscars the airline catering industry has the only slightly less glamorous Mercurys. After spending many soul-destroying months trying to speak to airline food buyers and getting no-where someone pointed out that if we won one of these little beauties it might be easier to get taken seriously in the industry.

After completing our entry and sticking a stamp on the envelope we realised that to afford the entry fee we would have to clean out the bank account and then reach down the back of the sofa for loose change. Walking back from the post box Abi pointed out that now we’d coughed up to enter we’d better win (no pressure)

The next 6 weeks were spent building an imitation air steward’s trolley, deciding what to wear and rehearsing our presentation endlessly rotating our parents, friends and Nana in the role of the judges.

By the time the day of judging came we were nervous but also strangely excited, we got such a warm welcome by the competition organisers that the whole day turned out be less of a test and more of a fun Grassy outing. Abi dressed up a scientist, I wheeled the airhostess trolley and the judges were lovely. It was only on the drive back from Heathrow that we realised that after all that hard work and all that excitement we REALLY wanted to win it….

NPD

noreply@blogger.com (grasshopper) — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 10:54:00 +0000

New product development is a process that the food industry takes very seriously. Whole teams of food scientists are hired to handle it and they call it ‘NPD’. For Grasshopper it means that Abi and I phone up lots of companies and get samples of different kinds of dried fruit, maple syrup and cereal and then eat them. We are currently working on NPD.

One of our investors brought back a packet of cereal from America for us to use as inspiration for our NPD work. I was so inspired by it that I ate it last night while I was watching Midsomer Murders (Our friend Kirsty is a detective on that and has to say things like ‘Let’s do this the easy way shall we?’) After I had eaten it I had to wash the pot out, measure 60g of gravel into the pot and glue the lid back on so that it can be used for NPD research.

Business is great

noreply@blogger.com (grasshopper) — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 18:04:00 +0000

In business it’s important to give the appearance of success. That means that when people ask how things are going and you want to say ‘OUR SUPPLIERS HAVE GONE BUST, WE HAVE AN ORDER DUE, IF WE DON’T DELIVER IT WE’LL LOSE EVERYTHING’ you are not allowed. You have to smile and say ‘Business is great’.

Grassy recently lucked out by getting backed by a pair of lady investors. This ended a long period of ‘yeahbutnobutyeahbutno’ from the bank and gave Grassy a new lease of life. To celebrate our investors invited us to a posh, Women of The Year event, our first chance to impress them and present an appearance of success.

It was at the Dorchester, neither of us had ever been there before and when we saw Dr Foxy from Capital FM in the lobby next to someone who looked a LOT like Lionel Ritchie we became hopeful that the lunch would be a star-studded event like the last one (where I ate Ether Rantzen’s bread roll and Abi shared a hand drier with Dame Vera Lynn) We were not disappointed when the first person we spotted as we walked through the door was Woman’s Hour broadcaster Jenni Murray. Needless to say we made friends with her straight away and ended up discussing lots of things including genetic variance in Chihuahuas and cultural isolationism in New Zealand and the surrounding islands. It might have been sometime between those two subjects, that the ‘Business is great’ rule slipped my mind a TINY bit just for a moment, I’m not exactly sure.

Our chat was cut short when our investors arrived and we sat down for lunch (which consisted of food items that can be described using the words ‘mousse’ and ‘jus’ but not ‘bap’). After managing to appear professional for nearly an hour lunch ended and the award ceremony began. Abi and I were delighted when our new-best-friend Jenni Murray was called up to the stage to receive an award and we clapped in a ladylike way (when only half your hand touches).

Jenni paid tribute to the esteemed company in the room and talked about the financial difficulties that businesses are facing. Then out of nowhere we were thrilled to hear her talking about us…
‘I have just met two young women’ she began
‘Who started a porridge business from their kitchen and now they sell it in Waitrose!’
Abi and I looked at our investors and beamed with pride. For about one and half seconds it felt like we had really arrived, that we belonged that we really were a success. Then the thing happened that always happens, the Grassy effect…
‘Which is remarkable’ Jenni went on,
‘Because last year they nearly went BANKRUPT’.
Abi shot me a look that said ‘What did you tell her?’ and I smiled back weakly and tried to remember for next time ‘Business is great’

Grassy day out: The Women of the Year Awards 2009

noreply@blogger.com (grasshopper) — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 09:12:00 +0000

Abigail and Fleur enter a parallel universe...

My first ever brush with the world of celebrity was when at the age of 5 I was invited on stage at The King’s Theatre, Southsea to sing with Brian Cant from ‘Play-a-way’ during the Christmas Panto. I remember the bright lights, the confectionary thrust into my hand by a member of the chorus that my mother relieved me of as soon as I got back to my seat and more than anything I remember the applause. My dreams of being a child star were ignited at Miss Brown’s school of ballet where I made friends with a girl named Rachelle who had a rabbit fur coat and ginger ringlets. Her mum used to ferry her between dance classes and auditions smoking extra long cigarettes while simultaneously fixing Rachelle’s hair with Elnette (hairspray plus fag equals flame-thrower). I envied her slip-on shoes, her make up and her part as orphan 4 in the local production of Annie (‘YER NEVER FULLY DRESSED WITHOUT A SMIIIIIIIIILE’) She was to me, in her tee shirt made from man-made fibres with a transfer of kittens on the front; pure glamour.

In the 5th form Louise Burgess told me she that she’d seen Lionel Blair in WHSmiths and once when I went shopping in London with Mum we walked past Adam Faith and her arm brushed against his leather jacket. That was the extent of my experience with fame and celebrity before Grasshopper and the last bit doesn’t count, as I’m not really sure who Adam Faith is.

I have long since suspected that famous people all know each other and live in the same road where they can relax away from the rest of us. The name of the road is kept a secret and there is a special estate agent (the actor who played Max Farnham in Brookside) who contacts you and invites you to move in once you have been on the telly. Yesterday Abi and I attended the Women of The Year awards. The awards recognise achievement and I am not being modest when I say I have no idea how we got nominated to attend.

When we arrived Abi went to find our table and I went in search of the cloakroom. As soon as I got there I found myself SURROUNDED by famous people and felt like I’d opened the door onto a parallel universe. Fern Britten chatted to Joan Armatrading, Maureen Lipman to Floella Benjamin. Dame Vera Lynn waited in line for a wee while Prue Leith stood at the hand-dryer. Simultaneously thrilled and over-whelmed I rushed off to find Abi to tell her that my theory that all the famous people know each other was right and that they were all in the toilet right now and to come and see. I rushed through the doors into the ballroom at the Intercontinental Hotel and saw our table number 19 right in front of me.

I called out, interrupting her conversation and all heads turned to look at me. I was about to blurt out my news when I saw that the scene I had interrupted was Abi, sitting to the right of Dame Esther Rantzen, with the Prime Minister’s wife pushing past her, being introduced by one ITN newsreader to another. Much as I tried to act natural and adjust my expression from ‘stunned mullet’ to ‘friend to the stars’ I almost certainly failed and revealed myself as in interloper. Abi however, enjoying her starter, took to fame like a duck to water and is now on first name terms with Dame Esther.

[AE: Fleur has of course neglected to mention that the whole point of the lunch was not to meet famous people but to celebrate the achievement of inspiring women. Thank you, Women of The Year for having us to lunch, Grasshopper salutes you.]

My Beautiful Life

noreply@blogger.com (grasshopper) — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 14:52:00 +0000

When The Mail published a piece about Grasshopper last year the response was unbelievable. Even though they dressed us up like Anthea Turner, slathered us in make-up and made us perch on the work-surface of my kitchen, Britain cheered and I even attracted an admirer from Sutton Coldfield. So when The Mail asked if I’d like to be featured in a Health & Wellbeing piece last week I jumped at the chance.

The weekly slot features a businesswoman alongside a breakdown of what she spends to keep her fit and well. Some initial Google action showed that the kind of thing they were looking for was

‘Nicky Clarke does my hair, I’ve known Nicky for years, in fact when my quins were born Nicky styled their as they emerged from the birth canal’ or ‘I go to The Spa at The Mandarin Oriental where 5 women work on my body at the same time using a mixture of diamond dust and ass’s milk, it takes years off me’

As my beauty regime amounts to soap and water followed by face cream scrounged off my mum I began to feel daunted. My trepidation grew when I discovered that the feature would include a full-length shot of me dressed and styled by the paper and reached fever pitch when I arrived at the studio for the shoot to see that the other subjects looked like Sheryl Cole.

The stylist looked me up and down while the hair and make-up lady asked me what I normally used on my lips (Vaseline) and how I usually added ‘texture’ to my hair (my hair has only one texture, fluffy). The first dress they picked out went over the top half of me ok but got stuck and shielded only by the curtain that divided me from the photographer/stylist and Sheryl Cole-alikes I tried to take it off again and got stuck in the manner of a puppy in a cardboard box. The shoot itself was mercifully brief and involved me standing with my hand on my hip in thick make-up, stilettos and a mini-dress with a swirly pattern (the only one that I could get on although as I wriggled into it I remembered something my mother had told me once ‘just because you can do it up doesn’t mean it fits’)

After I did the interview I reported back to Abi and told her how I had cleverly used the opportunity to mention some of our Grasshopper friends who had supported us in the past to try and get more hits on their websites. Jem Hall is a friend of ours from home, he went to St Johns and his dad is an expert on military uniforms and wears a hat like a French Revolutionary. Jem is a windsurfing coach but only teaches people who are already brilliant and want to learn tricks that range from very difficult to impossible. I told Abi that I had managed to mention him in the piece and she went quiet. Already nervous that I was going to look like an over-made-up Oompa-Loompa Abi took what was left of my self-esteem and dispatched it with a savage accuracy that can only be achieved by a member of ones own family.

‘Did you ask Jem first? Do you really think that he wants you as his poster-girl?’

The piece will run on a Monday in October, watch this space...

www.jemhall.com

The Lost City of Nutlantis

noreply@blogger.com (grasshopper) — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 16:42:00 +0000

WARNING PLOT SPOILER ALERT: The squirrel gets it

Grasshopper is planning to grow in the next six months and in order to do so we have recruited an easy-going Tasmanian hockey player to head up the investment proposal. His name is Todd and on Tuesday we took him to the nut factory to meet the lovely people who make our porridge for us.

The factory is ENORMOUS and Grassy is its smallest ever customer. In fact Sue our account manager only took us on because we shared her interest in the history of British military vehicles. One whole warehouse is devoted to a 50 ft high stainless steel mixing machine that looks like a cross between a giant washing machine drum and The Wall of Death from Clarence Pier fun fair.

Half the factory is completely sealed off with plastic sheeting similar to when the scientists arrive at Elliott’s house at the end of ET. Behind the plastic screens is the area where the nuts get processed by special nut workers who are not allowed to talk to the non-nut workers in case they contaminate them. They are allowed to smile at them though through the special window in the plastic sheeting.

There is a new warehouse at the factory where they store hundreds and hundreds of tonnes of nuts and nothing else. Only the nut people are allowed in and the whole building is sealed off. Last autumn a lone squirrel managed to penetrate the layers of security and arrive inside what, to him must have seemed like the Lost City of Nutlantis. The discovery apparently blew his mind and before going out to tell his family what he had found he decided to have a spot of lunch. Unfortunately squirrels, like me, find portion-control difficult to manage and his light lunch turned into a lost weekend of constant eating. Sadly, having ingested hundred of times more calories than he had expended he became so fat that he got wedged into the hole in the ceiling that he had come in though and was discovered a few weeks later by the man that come to fix the roof. Having been unable to escape and spread the news of his discovery the existence of the lost city of Nutlantis thankfully remains a mystery to his fellow Rodentia, a place that the squirrels of Britain can only dream of.

Everything I know about sick leave.

noreply@blogger.com (grasshopper) — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 08:45:00 +0000

Our mum is amazing. In the 70s she ran dad’s practice, threw regular dinner parties involving fondues and avocados, had 3 kids under 10 and dressed every day like Mia Farrow in ‘Rosemary’s baby’ If she was ill and needed time off people would say ‘You put your feet up and have a break, ooh just one thing…have you done the banking and picked up the kids from brownies/orchestra/kung fu?’ It is only now that we have our own business that we truly understand what that must have been like.

In the first year of Grasshopper Abi broke her foot and her arm, it made her cranky for around 6 months. Did she stop working? No…she didn’t miss one day of pestering unwitting members of the media and high on Tramadol she brought home the bacon time after time.

Last week I had minor surgery and, inspired by Abi’s example, the first words I uttered on regaining consciousness after the anaesthetic were ‘custard creams’

Nurse: ‘YOU ARE IN RECOVERY NOW DEAR, YOU HAVE HAD AN OPERATION’

ME: (pushing my drip out the way and extending a shrivelled hand towards the tea trolley) ‘custaaaard creeeeeeeams’

I did one year of nursing training at King’s College London and was top in ‘Drugs Administration’ (mostly because the teacher had really lovely thick hair and I wanted her to notice me) Just as the school for tropical medicine has antivenom for different types of snake bites I can tell you with great authority that the antidote for anaesthetic medication is custard creams. The suggested dose is 6 every 20 minutes with a pint of tea.

If you have your own business or small children it’s the same deal, the only things which get you time off sick are bleeding from the eyes or coma.

Being a celebrity

noreply@blogger.com (grasshopper) — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 10:12:00 +0000

Today I was on the radio again. Every time before I go on Abi briefs me saying:

A: ‘Make sure you mention that we’re looking for an investor’
F: ‘I will’
A: ‘Make sure you mention the O2 awards and the website’
F: ‘OK’

As I sat in the BBC waiting room this morning I thought ‘We need an investor.We won the O2 award’

Then they sat me down in front of Jonathan Ross’s brother and put Stevie Wonder headphones on me and I blurted out something about how our porridge is not the kind that you should eat in the recession because it is so expensive and how it’s much better to make regular porridge on the hob.

Then I just sat there like a stunned mullet staring at Jonathan Ross’s brother and thinking ‘I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU JUST SAID THAT’. Then I went home and lay under a blanket and had half a bag of humbugs before lunch.

Good news and bad news.

noreply@blogger.com (grasshopper) — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 08:27:00 +0000

Good News:
Thanks to Grasshopper’s resident newspaper hack Babs my 2 PAGE piece ran in The Daily Mail this week and we discovered that the whole World seems to read the Daily Mail.

Bad News:
They ran the chubby Anthea shots and people now think we have our meetings in full make-up perched on the work surface of my kitchen.

More Good News:
We received about 300 emails overnight and in true Grasshopper fashion they were pretty far out. From Finnish felt-makers to ladies knitting tea cosies from kelp in the Outer Hebrides they have all been in touch to let us know that our catalogue of incompetence has inspired them to give up their day job and make felt/ weave kelp full time.

We are so grateful to Babs for taking time out of her busy schedule unearthing sex scandals and interviewing cannibals to get this published, we couldn’t have done it without her.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1141409

PS Grasshopper mum would like to point out that I didn’t go to Kings and in fact went to UCL which is consistently several points above Kings in The Times ratings, not that it matters, but that it was definitely UCL and that I did a really hard course that there's only like 6 places on each year.

Everything I know about stress

noreply@blogger.com (grasshopper) — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 15:02:00 +0000

Dad says that stress doesn’t exist but he also says ‘lunch is for wimps’ and he’s wrong about that (lunch is my third favourite meal of the day after breakfast and elevenses). According to medical science the symptoms of stress include irritability and sensitivity to criticism: in Abi’s case you can add spontaneous freak weather conditions and national security threats (http://teamgrassy.blogspot.com/2008/08/my-sister-london-and-pathetic-fallacy.html).

Stress busting is a very personal thing, it’s all about finding out what’s right for you... I once dated a man who used to listen to Enya in the shower before he had to sack someone (she wasn’t in the shower with him, her songs played through a speaker) and another who used to go to Africa and shoot things. Abi’s favourite stress busting activity is swimming lengths; she recommends 50-150 depending on the level of relief required. Mine is seeing Ralf who bends me like a pretzel while I play dead (www.stillpointlondon.com) Abi also advises the following activities in times of extreme crisis: stroking your pet (see below), baking and pacing. I like to line things up, put things in alphabetical order or count things (using my fingers and the number patterns in my mind). I don’t have a pet because I am allergic.

Credit Crunchtastic

noreply@blogger.com (grasshopper) — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 11:21:00 +0000

Apparently an important part of marketing is in-store promotions. Abi and I made one attempt at this last year and it was a complete failure. Although we tried our best to overcome our nerves and proffer the miniature scoops of congealed porridge with conviction the customers sensed our fear and lurched away from us, taking cover behind a shelf of condiments and other larder essentials.

Last week Waitrose invited us to do an in-store promotion in the food hall at John Lewis Oxford St and because we love Waitrose and do anything they say, we agreed. Having decided that giving away only a morsel of porridge is too stingy and that giving a whole pot is way better we arrived with 500 pots stashed in our trade-mark leopard print bags from the pound shop and prepared to stand in the corner and be ignored. We were SO WRONG, the store is like heaven, everyone who works there was LOVELY to us and we didn’t want to go home afterwards. When we gave people free samples they reacted as though they were auditioning for a Daz commercial, ‘[GASP] I never thought my tea-towels could be that white!’
It was heaven to stand there for an hour feeling the love and meeting our public, people actually THRONGED at one point.

The cherry on the John-Lewis-experience cake came when an old friend of mine arrived out of the blue to help us out. The last time I had seen her I was copying her homework 22 years ago and here she was climbing aboard the Grasshopper Lovetrain. As with everything as soon as it was over, like a monkey with a button I wanted to do it again, so we’re booked in for Friday 6th February and hope to see you then for another credit crunchtastic Grassy give away bonanza.

Grasshopper, friend to the stars

noreply@blogger.com (grasshopper) — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 14:04:00 +0000

As you will know if you have seen our Facebook pictures, Grasshopper has some celebrity friends. If you were impressed when we told you that we had met Ainsley Harriott and Vanessa Feltz I can tell you that since then we have enjoyed the following celebrity endorsement:

1. We had a drink (tap water) with Angelina Jolie’s hair dresser
2. We gave some to Gemma Aterton from James Bond (V pretty)
3. We talked about Grassy to this American guy who had just sold his company (I realised afterwards that it was Skype)
4. We have also sent porridge to Fern & Philip but we don’t know if they have tried it yet.

Dad said that we should send some porridge to Barrack Obama but I don’t think he’d be allowed to eat it. Having drifted off into a celebrity related daydream starring me as the first lady with hair as thick as Monica Lewinsky’s I was brought back down to Earth with a thud when the photographs from The Daily Mail ‘Anthea Turner’ shoot arrived in my inbox....

Femail

noreply@blogger.com (grasshopper) — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 09:42:00 +0000

I always count my proverbial chickens way before they hatch. I assume that everything will work out perfectly and settle down to hours of happy fantasizing.

On Monday it became apparent that there is a possibility that The Daily Mail may run some of my blog in its Femail section (not as I accidentally called it the Shemale section which is a whole other publication). A photographer came over yesterday to take our picture, just in case The Mail decides to run the piece.

In my mind the above situation means that my blog will be published in the Newspaper, I will get so much fan mail that I will:

A: Have a boyfriend in time for my birthday in June
B: Be offered a regular column and a book deal

By the time the photographer arrived I was already preparing speeches for the following situations:

A: Being interviewed by Fern Britton
B: Being a guest judge on The X Factor
C: Accepting the Booker Prize

The photographer arrived with a hair and make up lady. Abi and I don’t actually own a lipstick between us as we use chapstick instead and, telling us that the look she was aiming for was Anthea Turner she went to work. When she had finished with me I looked like an extra from Band of Gold with hair sprayed into a Margaret Thatcher like bouffant. Abi fared rather better and turned out looking like Bruce’s dolly dealer on Play Your Cards Right.

Abi tries to nurture a more realistic approach to media and remind me that often people say they will print something about us and it doesn’t happen but this one really feels like a sure thing to me...watch this space.

It’s over....go home

noreply@blogger.com (grasshopper) — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 15:02:00 +0000

My favourite thing about the holidays apart from celebrating the birth of Jesus our risen lord is Grasshopper mum’s Christmas pudding. Although the number of people at lunch varies each year the size of the pudding remains constant meaning that the portion available for me is inversely proportional to the number at lunch. This year the portion left over was so meagre that I took the precaution of hiding behind a barricade of Flora cartons at the back of the fridge.

Mum takes nearly a whole day to make the holy pudding. It has about one hundred ingredients and she wraps it in layers of paper and string that are folded like a concertina before it is steamed for a day then she takes all the wrapping off and puts on a fresh layer and steams it again. It is the highlight of the year and the Flora defence is necessary because one year a houseguest failed to understand that the pudding is only slightly less important than the Shroud of Turin and ate all the leftovers without sharing.

Prior to the sacred pudding comes a turkey that Fiona Simpson’s dad gets. Fiona Simpson’s tortoise is 90 and has survived an actual kidnapping. The turkey is a special one that has been fed a macrobiotic diet and sent to boarding school. It has had the best life possible for a turkey. This year after watching Jamie Oliver, dad got a bit experimental and stuck a Satsuma up it but you couldn’t taste it.

Getting back into work mode is proving to be a bit tricky this year; I keep losing concentration and wandering off to buy sweets. Next to the sweet shop there is a carwash run by 8 Polish men. The other day when I was passing I thought ‘crikey there’s Patrick Swayzee’ but it was one of the men from the Polish carwash. Today I walked past and he was sitting outside with Polish Dennis Hopper. I think that the Polish carwash is just a front for a celebrity retirement village.

Nearly Christmas...

noreply@blogger.com (grasshopper) — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 12:23:00 +0000

My inner voice (Tony) turned out to be completely wrong. The interview that I was so worried about was amazing, truly, flattering in fact, thank goodness. True we look slightly orange in the picture but that’s just a detail, the main thing is that I don’t appear to be an incompetent fool, phew.

I’d like to tell you that Grasshopper is winding down to enjoy a family Christmas but it’s not the case at all, there are no decorations up at Grassy HQ just 100 kilos of powdered milk stacked floor to ceiling. The last few months we have been secretly moving Grassy production to an amazing new factory in Cheshire, which is, so space age it looks like Cape Canaveral. It has huge machines with flashy lights and a massive warehouse like the final scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark (I just mistyped that as Raisins of the Lost Ark which is the Grassy remake) Anyway, I have been in Cheshire meeting our new production team who love Prince Charles and have a photo of him in their boardroom so we had that in common. We are delivering porridge to Waitrose up until Christmas Eve then Grassy will be making a few social appearances and hunkering down to some quality telly and a couple of kilos of Roses grow on you before we attack 2009 with our usual vigour. Abi meantime is learning to fly-fish. As you do.

Everything I know about journalists.

noreply@blogger.com (grasshopper) — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 14:10:00 +0000

The awkward thing about Abi trying to attract press interest in Grasshopper is that sometimes it works and then I have to speak to people I don’t know. Our first ever Grasshopper interview was a piece for a weekend broadsheet. Mum, knowing that it is in my nature to chat openly to complete strangers about the most intimate details of my life and terrified that details of my murky past would be splashed across the front page gave me a pep-talk the day before.
Fixing her eyes on mine with a look that said ‘I am your mother, I OWN you’ she said in a low voice ‘Remember my darling, we are very PRIVATE PEOPLE’

With this firmly in my mind Abi and I set off to meet the reporter at a café in Borough Market. Abi gave me one clear instruction of her own before we went in: ‘Don’t say anything negative about anyone’ The interview went like this:

Reporter Lady [RL]: ‘Have you heard of a porridge company called Stoats?’
FE (who has never heard of them): ‘We love them, they are amazing’
RL: ‘Their porridge is made with squirrel milk and salt’
FE: ‘We love their porridge’
RL: ‘Is it true that you sent some Grasshopper porridge to Prince Charles?’
FE: ‘Yes. We love Prince Charles’

You get the gist.

My second proper interview happened last week and it didn’t go quite as smoothly. The reporter was from a business magazine and I knew as soon as I saw him and he thrust his microphone towards my head that the ‘we love them’ approach wasn’t going to cut it. I tried to remember everything I knew about journalists but couldn’t come up with much. Our friend Barbara is a journalist. On her first day at work on a tabloid newspaper the Editor dropped a photo of the Tamworth 2 on her desk and said ‘Find those pigs by Monday or clear your desk’ after that they sent her to Russia to interview a serial killer. This guy was nothing like our darling Barbara though and I visibly squirmed as he positioned the microphone by my face and shuffled a bit nearer with his notebook poised. The winter sun shone in through the window like an anglepoise lamp in my face and the interrogation began.

Direct questions about exact sums of money spent/earned/invested were assertively requested along with bank statements, national insurance numbers and some DNA (just rub this cottonbud on the inside of your cheek).
I HATED it.
By the end of the hour I felt like I had been burgled and grabbed my things and made my escape. Afterwards I ran it by my friend Emma who is experienced in business hoping for reassurance.
FE: ‘How much financial information is it ok to reveal in a interview with the press?’
Emma: ‘It depends’ [PAUSE] ‘but basically, none’.

Every time I tried to settle down with a cup of soup or an episode of The Wire I kept getting distracted by the thought that everything I had mentioned in the interview was going to be published and since I didn’t really remember what I had said that was disconcerting. For two days RM persisted in advanced micro-extraction of information using email and text messages. Emails to confirm the surnames of people I mentioned in passing once, their current place of work, their salary, EVERYTHING. Usually a Grassy blog has a happy ending where I wrap it up with a wink and a smile but to my horror this one isn’t over yet as we haven’t seen the article! We are still in the dark!

‘How shallow’ I used to think when I read interviews with Gwyneth Paltrow saying how grateful and blessed she is. Surely you should just be open? Apparently not, apparently the only defence against the burgled feeling is a blanket ‘We love them’ approach which we will now be permanently adopting.

Everything I know about journalists: ‘I love them’

To be continued...

noreply@blogger.com (grasshopper) — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 15:04:00 +0000

Albert Rd, Southsea is where my dad used to play in Uncle Dudley’s men’s outfitters, where I had my first job working at Tremlett’s chemist squirting out-of-date enemas down the drain for £1 and hour and where we had the life-changing experience of watching ET at The Salon cinema.

It is also the place where just occasionally, if we were lucky, we’d get sent on an errand to buy something from The Southsea Health Shop, known always as ‘Herbies’. Herbies at that time stocked many of the ingredients of Delia Smith recipes that weren’t widely available like cumin seeds and carob powder (looks like cocoa tastes like dust). It also stocked of the holy grail of confectionary, The Kendall Mint Cake.

If regular confectionary just isn’t doing it for you and you need a retro sugar-high that goes on and on then The Kendall Mint Cake is for you. And with 300% more calories than your average chocolate bar it is the gift that keeps on giving…[AE: Where are you going with this?]

We are happy and excited to report the Southsea Health Shop, original provider of obscure wholefood ingredients to the forward thinking mums of the 1970s now stocks Grassy.

Please don’t hate us…

noreply@blogger.com (grasshopper) — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 06:38:00 +0000

Forgive me porridge-eaters, it has been 50 days since my last blog. During that time I have been distracted by a series of extra-ordinary events, in fact so many things have gone right that if I were someone else I’d probably hate me for getting all the luck.

Here are the highlights; I will try not to sound smug or self-regarding when I describe them. Please remember that Abi and I are the business underdogs and that life before Grassy was a catalogue of failure and despair that technically you should be on our side and want us to do well…

1. Waitrose placed their first order

2. The product sold 3 times the forecasted amount in the first week (if you are thinking that we probably just got our family to buy it all you’d be right, but see point 3)

3. Sales in the second week doubled again.

4. We won the regional heat of the O2 X awards in the food and drink sector

5. Waitrose called to arrange a photo shoot as they are writing an article on us for their magazine.

6. Waitrose re-ordered after one week

7. I was interviewed about business on BBC London and didn’t get stuck on any of the questions.

8. Waitrose re-ordered AGAIN after another week

9. Abi made friends with an advertising agency who are going to give us the help that we can’t afford in return for a chocolate hedgehog cake.

All of this was so over-whelming that I lay on my bed for long periods of time staring at the ceiling. What happens now? Are the outsiders becoming the insiders? How is that going to work out? Will I get used to things going right all the time? Is just thinking about that going to jinx it? Will I be able to disguise my Margaret Thatcher face of fury when they announce someone else’s name for the O2 award? Will I get inner-confidence because I am a successful entrepreneur and radiate boyfriend-attracting charisma? Answers to thee questions will follow shortly.

You Cannot Be Serious

noreply@blogger.com (grasshopper) — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 14:24:00 +0000

In Mrs Conroy’s English class we studied ‘The Importance of Being Ernest’. As the pun is in the spelling of the name and my spelling is weak (because I am a free thinker) I can’t remember if it is Ernest or Earnest. Either way it means SERIOUS.

With Grasshopper it was clear from the start that the only way my sister and I could work together was if I stopped taking myself seriously and stopped trying to have meetings with her and set targets. If you work with people outside your gene pool they will defer to you, respect you and have meetings about targets to your heart’s content. The downside is the possibility that they will harbour an undetected resentment and leak information to a rival company in order for them to mount an aggressive take-over that leaves you unemployable and in therapy for the rest of your natural life.

The price for the mutual trust that I enjoy with Abi is a daily barrage of merciless teasing which usually focuses on me being Maggie Thatcher/ a hermit/ Rainman. Acting serious is, in fact, a Grasshopper crime punishable by vicious parody unless, of course, the defendant is rendered temporarily insane and morbidly self pitying by the mind altering effect of a hormone surge [AE: Which goes as extenuating circumstances in a court of law]

Mrs Conroy by the way (see top of paragraph) was a universally loved teacher for the following reasons:

1 She was very pretty
2 She had a bike with a wicker basket on it
3 She knew Sade

When I was 16 I wrote a very grim short story about a man who blows his own head off. Where other more conservative teachers might have questioned my mental health she gave me 20/20 and wrote ‘This is of a publishable standard’ in red pen at the bottom. Amid the self-doubt/ train tracks/ acne/ national health glasses while I waited for my proper ones (if you are too young to know what they are count yourself lucky) that recognition meant everything. Mrs Conroy, we salute you.

[AE: I just ran spellcheck over this and it said that ‘Rainman’ isn’t a word and suggests ‘Trainman’. Who’s ever heard of him? Tom Cuise stars in TRAINMAN?’]

Happy Birthday Grasshopper

noreply@blogger.com (grasshopper) — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 07:12:00 +0000

Today Grasshopper is 2. The enthusiasm with which I celebrate the passing of another Grasshopper year is in stark contrast to what happens on my my own birthday when I am always a misery. Self-pity descends, the annual Bridget Jonesian life inventory is taken and for another year, I fall short. Last year, anticipating the above Abi decided to come and see me in London. Unfortunately, due to the relationship between Abi's mental state and cataclysmic events [AE: See 'My Sister, London & The Pathetic Fallacy'] the resulting visit was 2 days of carnage culminating in my car being destroyed in the middle of the night by a truck. The first we knew of this was the cops waking us up at 2am and asking if they could come in. Abi, having gained all her knowledge of police procedure from the telly assumed that they had sent a lady police officer in order to soften the news that our entire family had been wiped out.

The statistics indicating the likelihood of a business to fail and leave its founders homeless, mentally unstable and unemployable (are you even allowed to issue yourself your own P45?) are intimidating. Last year's figures state that the changes of Grassy succeesing are marginally slimmer than the chance of:

1: Abi and I getting struck by lightening on different days.

2: A camel passing through the eye of a needle.

When Googling for these stats I found an online survey which asks questions like 'What market segment verticals are you targeting for?' It calculates the percentage chance of a business succeeding and ours came out at 8% but I didn't understand all of the questions so it wasn't really fair. So here we are, 2 years on, defying the odds and happy that we haven't had to get real jobs. Abi, no doubt, will be celebrating with a bag of winegums but I'll have to think of something else as I'm not allowed them (because they make my face swell up).

My Not-Husband

noreply@blogger.com (grasshopper) — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 16:14:00 +0000

My Not-Husband is too old for me and looks like Chief Brody from Jaws. He has the neutral demeanour of a Tai Chi master and meeting him was like that game they play in Latin America when they electrocute themselves with a car battery for kicks. In retrospect I suspect that my metaphorical window overlooked his inner courtyard which people don't always like.

Last time I saw him he explained that Abi and I shouldn't worry about big companies making the same product as us and that we should put as much of ourselves into the brand as we could; that we were our own point of difference. This is a helpful notion and can help alleviate The Fear [See 'The Fear and How to avoid Panic Ping-Pong'] although obviously, we still don't like copycats.

In a parallel universe we settled down together in the big house at the end of Slapton beach and grew rhubarb.

The Fear and how to avoid Panic Ping-Pong

noreply@blogger.com (grasshopper) — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 16:52:00 +0000

'The Fear' describes a state of sudden, paralysing anxiety, which arrests productivity and ones ability to observe even basic standards of civil behaviour with others (especially family members, call centre operatives and bank staff). Our in-depth research has proven that starting a business with your sister when neither of you has any idea what you are doing offers ample opportunity to experience The Fear on a regular basis.

The worst thing about The Fear is that it is catching; here is an actual example:

Abi: 'What's wrong with you?'

Fleur: 'It's all too much...I don't know what to do...I can't cope'

Abi: 'What do you mean you can't cope? What haven't you told me? Are you quitting? Who will run the business side of the company? How will I pay my mortgage? Who will look after my unborn children when I lose everything because of you?'

If I respond at this point the worst possible outcome ensues; an anxious exchange of escalating edginess flying backwards and forwards like a frantic game of panic ping-pong.

In these situations the standard co-dependent subtext is 'you sound scared, if you can't keep it together then nor can I'

Another method of expressing The Fear is by being bad tempered and scary to others. An example of this is what happened when I got The Fear mid-meeting with the bank manager. My demeanour changed from easy going organic porridge maker into Latin American dictator and commander of guerrilla forces in a grotesque David Banner style metamorphosis. Abi responded to this in a way that is unparalleled in its ability to exacerbate the situation; she took the mickey.

Abi: (as we are leaving the bank manager's office) 'Oh my God, you just turned into Maggie Thatcher'

Fleur: (with a look that says YOU DARE TO INSULT ME, I AM THE PRIME MINISTER, YOU WILL OBEY ME OR I WILL DESTROY YOU ALL) What do you mean?

Abi: LOOK, You're still doing it'

The conversation continues until eventually, from pure exhaustion I am forced to admit that I AM Maggie Thatcher and apologise for being rude in front of the bank manager and for dismantling the welfare state.

The only way to deal with someone who has the Fear is to act like it aint no biggie, Eg:

Abi: (Trembling like a frightened rabbit) 'What's going to happen at this meeting? What do you think they will ask me? (Translation: Do you think that it will show that we don't know what we are doing and that they will belittle us in a way that will mentally scar me for life?'

Fleur: (lying) 'It's not really a meeting, it's just a chat really, we're popping in, they're not expecting us to know anything about our business, it's very informal'

I know that I have The Fear when I notice that I have been lying on my bed staring at the ceiling for more than 10 minutes. Abi knows when I have the fear because she has an aerial in her head that can pick up my channel. She also uses Echo Location.

Helicopter Man

noreply@blogger.com (grasshopper) — Sun, 10 Aug 2008 11:02:00 +0000

Funding has been a significant challenge [AE: Total nightmare] for Grasshopper since we founded. I spent time trawling the net for information and asked around to try and find out how other businesses survived before they were in profit. People were universally cagey about sharing this information. That, naturally, was an irritant.

The only options seemed to be:

1: Get a grant [AE: HARHARHARHARHAR] After exploring this option by filling in 10 grillion forms I concluded that of course, there is no free money except the MARVELLOUS Prince's Trust but we were too old for them. [AE: We LOVE Prince Charles]

2: Beg the bank for a massive loan [AE: Millstone] to fund you [AE: Ruin your life]

3: Go back to the Venture Capitalists [Tony: I'm not going and you can't make me]

Each of these options was equally repugnant and as it seemed like we had to choose one of them I began to feel extremely vexed about our situation. The amount of low-end confectionery I was eating reached an all-time high and green vegetable consumption (principally of the Brassica family) troughed. This period culminated in 2 virtually sleepless nights that went like this:

10pm Go to bed

11pm Get up and watch Jim'll Fix It on Your Tube (check out the girl that sang with Abba, where is she now?)

1am Go through every member of my kindergarten class in my head in alphabetical order to try and hypnotise myself.

1.30am Download Paul McKenna 'I Can Make You Supremely Confident' onto Ipod.

2am Do Paul McKenna 'ICMYSC' twice in a row (to try and garner some benefit from my predicament by using the time to subliminally develop life-long self esteem)

4am Wake up having had a nightmare about being Paul McKenna's assistant and losing something that he needs in his act.

Next night, repeat above.

On day three I spoke to Helicopter Man. He started his own business and has a hairy chest like Magnum PI except blonde. He emphasized the difference between debt at the bank and debt to people who know you in real life. He extolled the beauty of multiple soft loans and it all made perfect sense.

My sister, London and The Pathetic Fallacy

noreply@blogger.com (grasshopper) — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 12:12:00 +0000

Abi is happiest when she is on or near the sea, preferably in it. When she was little she wore her goggles and swimming cap at mealtimes and spent hours in the bath, timing how long she could stay under (ages). Because of this she rarely comes to London and her impression of the city is primarily based on what is reported on the 6 O'clock news (stabbings, bombings, abductions general carnage). Every time she takes the train to London for a meeting I reassure her that London is a friendly and vibrant global village and yet, every time her reluctant foot steps onto the platform at Waterloo the Universe seems to sense that she has arrived in the City and unleashes hell.

Everything that I tell her only happens 'once in a blue moon' or 'only on the other side of town' seems to arrive on our doorstep: choppers circle overhead, joyriders career onto the pavement and handbags are blown up by the cops in controlled explosions. Could this be the pathetic fallacy that Mrs Conroy was talking about in fifth form English [See 'You Cannot Be Serious'] Could Abi actually be manifesting the chaos around her through the power of thought? I considered putting my theory to her, to try and find out if we could harness her powers to influence our customers' buying behaviour and boost porridge sales. After some consideration I decided that to draw attention to her dark powers could trigger an anxiety response similar to Sissy Spacek in 'Carrie' inadvertently putting the whole City at risk. So I decided to say nothing and distract her, instead, with a packet of winegums.

How business is like dating

noreply@blogger.com (grasshopper) — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 14:04:00 +0000

In the World of dating I am the last to get picked for the team. My sister is the opposite. Her hair is lustrous like the Golden Fleece and her presence has the same effect on men as chumming the water has on sharks. Where managing relationships in business is like dating I have learnt everything I know from her as none of it comes naturally to me.

When we have something the other people want they respond to my emails on the same day, point by point. They get things in the post on the same day that I ask for them and they tell me how much their child/wife/boss/swimming teacher loved our product. How friendly they seem: how personable.

When the other people have what they need they stop replying to my email. When I phone I get voicemail or a secretary. The secretary recognises my voice from when I called yesterday and the day before. On Monday she was sympathetic, on Tuesday she was embarrassed and today she is irritated. She thinks that my persistence is impertinent; she reveres her boss and thinks that I am pestering him when he is important and busy. 'He will be in touch if he wants to take things further' she says. This is the business version of 'He's just not that into you.'

In order to 'take things further' in circumstances like this one needs to practice the advanced Marshall art of 'Come here, go away' One has to know when to respond and when not to. My sister is a black belt. I still make elementary mistakes. If someone doesn't take my call I want to call again and again and again until I get the answer I want. I become a monkey with a button that can't stop pressing it even though he is electrocuting himself. When they continue to ignore me I am Margaret Thatcher in a headscarf driving a Sherman tank towards them. 'OBEY ME' she glares. This method does not work.

In real life Abi says that i am not allowed to phone a guy after 3 dates and say 'Are you my boyfriend? Do you think that you want to settle down with me?' and in business the guidelines are the same. I have to act cheerful and easy going even when they keep me waiting or are rude or annoying. This guy I liked last summer organised for me to go and see a psychic as a treat (as you do). I felt sure that in doing so he was making a pass at me. The psychic said that I was part alien and that I had a large aerial sticking out of my head. I didn't want to make her feel like she wasn't good at her job so I thanked her and told her that everything she said to me made perfect sense and that she did indeed have strong psychic powers. I asked her about my not-boyfriend who had organised for me to see her, perhaps she could psychically sense whether we had a future together? She looked at me with a mixture of embarrassment and pity and the aerial on my head picked up the psychic message that she was sending...'He will be in touch if he wants to take things further.'