brightfive

First look at our new offices

We had always intended our move to the current office to be temporary until our landlords (York, Selby & Malton Business Advice Centre – www.yorkbac.co.uk) had completed work on their grand plan – a new, purpose built ‘Eco Centre’ on the outskirts of York.

We enjoyed our first site visit last week and we were all hugely impressed with the offices and facilities that to date, we’d only ever seen in plans and visualisations.

The project is aimed at providing accommodation and business services to new and growing small business in York. It has been designed to be great for the environment too – both in its construction and day-to-day operation.

The building is heated and cooled by ground-source heating, stores rainwater for re-use and has a huge wind-turbine to provide some of the building’s electrical requirements.

Other facilities are a café and a communal area, outdoor courtyard, second floor mezzanine and a turfed roof terrace – perfect for those summer afternoons. We just hope the WiFi connection is good up there!

There are lots of workshop and office spaces available and if you are looking for new business premises in a contemporary new environment with business support services give York Business Advice Centre a call on (01904) 731562.

We’ll keep you posted but hope to be moved in the next couple of months.

Kitty Chaise Longue

Quite possibly the daftest cat related gift I’ve seen.

This was made by brightfive‘s own James Hall as a birthday gift for Katie and is being shown off beautifully by our cat Angelina. The craftsmanship is exquisite, the upholstery is of the highest quality and I’m sure that if we manage to keep it in the family for a couple of generations, it could become quite valuable.

Judge for yourself.

A day at the races...

It was my 30th birthday last week and although I’m very happy with my lot, I was still a little perturbed to be at this milestone age.

I knew that a new dress, lots of champagne and a day with good friends would be the only way to revive my flagging spirits so a day in the County Stand at York Races was organised.

The brightfive boys joined my friends and I for a lovely day out which saw the sun shine (a little bit), plenty of wins (our ‘good horse names and nice jockey outfits’ betting system was surprisingly effective) and plenty of champagne (thanks to mine and James’ big wins) for all.

As the sun went down after the final race we moved on for dinner followed by a few ‘quiet’ drinks – somehow resulting in us dancing to soft rock in an 80s bar until the early hours.

Don’t we look fancy?

Our alternative new website

Whilst building our lovely new website we were reminded of how terrible some websites used to be (and still are in some cases).

This inspired James to spend a happy hour making an alternative version of the site, much to our amusement.

Click here to see it in all its beauty (you really need to have your speakers on to fully appreciate it).

If there’s any retro effect that we’ve forgotten let us know and we’ll try to include it.

Indian Elephant extinct

Sometimes I get home and can’t be bothered to cook. I then start thinking about local eateries and takeouts. I occasionally decide on The Indian Elephant in Thorganby, York. It is (was…) in my opinion the best Indian restaurant I’ve ever eaten at. The food is superb – fresh, tasty and reasonably priced, and the ambience and service is second to none.

Imagine my horror when I polled up the other day to be told the restaurant had closed and was now instead ‘The Jefferson Arms’ serving standard pub fayre.

And most of the menu was off.

And the nice people have gone.

R.I.P. The Indian Elephant in Thorganby.