Telling it like it was

I've hummed and hawed about whether to write about this but in the end, well, here it is... A couple of weeks ago I had a morning to myself and ventured over to Frederiksberg to Creative Space to paint pottery. I was pretty excited as taking paintbrush to crockery is something I spent many a happy hour doing in London. The truth is, it didn't all go as planned.

It wasn't the space, that was beautiful, and everything was so tidily set out and there was lots of inspiration. There was a good range of pottery to paint, plenty of materials (brushes, sponges etc) - it could have been a pottery painting paradise.

Ah, but when I excitedly ventured into the studio (which was empty - it was a Thursday morning), my enthusiasm waned. Having chosen a plate that I wanted to paint and having shared with the owner my pottery painting tales from London, I asked if I could take some pictures so I could blog about her fabulous space. This is when things started to go down hill, 'They all say they're bloggers', she retorted and then told me that she had 'brought the idea of a pottery cafe to Denmark' and 'the copy cats were coming'. I could only assume that she thought I was one such 'copy cat', posing as a blogger. Well, I hope that if she is reading this, and perhaps this is why I feel compelled to write, she will see that I had no ulterior motive. I simply wanted to spread the joy, as it were...

With these comments lingering in the air, I took myself to the small table allocated to me and began to paint. After a couple of hours, I went to order a warm drink. I continued to paint and paint, chose a second piece to paint and painted it and the drink never came.

Given how quiet the shop was on that morning, I was surprised that as I went to pay for my pottery and the long forgotten drink order was remembered, the reason given was that another customer had distracted her.

I let it pass. Drink or no drink, I had painted a plate and a cute gingerbread man to hang on the Christmas tree. We all have bad days and so I thought I'd come back a week later to collect my fired pots and all would be well.

I was so disappointed when I went back this weekend and the gingerbread man, like the drink order, had been forgotten. He never made it to the kiln.

What can I say? I don't write this to suggest that you shouldn't give Creative Space a try - even poor customer service cannot detract from the joy of creativity - ultimately, that is the prerogative of the artist at work and not the third party who merely facilitates the process. Consider this 'customer feedback'. I think any business would be wrong to ignore it.