Pity the poor residents of Kingston upon Thames who had to go without artisan cheese, chocolates and continental biscuits a few weekends ago. It seems the lack of indivdually wrapped, handcrafted ewe's milk praline truffles was down to a data input problem: 15 eager European stallholders destined for a spot in the three-day Kingston upon Thames Euromarket arrived in the UK from France...
... and were taken 239 miles off course. Their cheeses and chocolates were wrongly believed to be destined for Kingston upon Hull, Humberside, instead of the prettier outskirts of south west London, and the unsuspecting market stallholders were left up north, with unexpected accommodation bills, no marketplace to sell their wares and a pile of goods that were rapidly passing their expiry dates, like their tempers. One poor chap had £7,000 worth of cheese on him. That's a lot of cheese to have lying around with no middle-class suburban family home cheese boards to go to.
Brian Newman, manager of Euromarkets GB Ltd who are responsible for booking these market stallholders from abroad, was on holiday at the time of the booking. On hearing about the cock-up, he said: “It’s a complete cock-up.” And in a case of insult to injury, it was discovered that Kingston upon Hull was expecting the Euromarket five weeks later and the market stallholders were a little over a month early to start flogging their foodstuffs. Newman was adamant that such problems will not occur again: "It certainly won't happen again. We are back in Kingston upon Thames on October 26."
We'll see about that. Check this site in October for news of 15 European market stallholders taking their cheese and bread and fancy sweets to Kingston, Jamaica.
