Skip to main content

Sister Act II: Back in the habit

Hello.

It may have escaped your notice that this particular vent for my various effusions has grown a touch quieter of late. Of course, seasoned long-term Coastalblog watchers, all one of you, will know that these sorts of longeurs are par for the course and eventually I trip back like a penitent drunk; replete with promises to do better and piteous apologies for letting you down yet again. In my defence, this time I've had a fairly good reason.

To a heady mix of regret and relief, your correspondent has wound up his long-time ball and chain/broken dream/drain of time/reasonably successful business/creator of marital discord (delete as applicable) and re-entered the world of working for other people. Which I don't propose to discuss here, because that would be crashingly dull. But the whole psychodrama of unravelling ten years hard yakka and sauntering off in a manner casual enough to convince the unseasoned observer has somewhat preoccupied me.

On a happier note, this sudden restructuring of existence, has, so far, seemed to reinstate something more resembling a work/life balance, which has the concomitant benefits of being able to do a few things other than worry about work. Like this. So, as I've said so many, many times over the past umpteen years, a more semi-regular service may resume. But I wouldn't count on it.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Inedible

"He says it's inedible" said my front of house manager, as she laid the half-eaten fish and chips in front of me, and instantly I relaxed.  Clearly, I observed, it was edible to some degree. I comped it, because I can't be arsed arguing the toss, and I want to make my front of house's lives as simple as possible. The haddock had been delivered that morning. The fryers had been cleaned that morning. The batter had been made that morning (and it's very good batter, ask me nicely and I'll give you the recipe some time). The fish and chips was identical to the other 27 portions I'd sent out on that lunch service, all of which had come back more or less hoovered up, we have have a (justified, if I do say so myself) very good reputation for our chips. But it was, apparently, "inedible". When it comes to complaints, less is more. If you use a hyperbolic word like that, I'll switch off, you've marked yourself as a rube, a chump, I'm not g...

To all intents and purposes, a bloody great weed.

I absolutely love trees, and I get quite irate when they get cut down. One of the aspects of life with which I most often find myself most at odds with my fellow man is that I'm not really a fan of the tidy garden. I like to see a bit of biodiversity knocking about the gaff, and to that end I welcome the somewhat overgrown hedge, am pro the bit of lawn left to run riot, and, most of all, very anti cutting down trees. I love the things, habitat, provider of shade, easy on the eye, home to the songbirds that delight the ear at dawn, the best alarm clock of all. To me, cutting a naturally growing tree down is an act of errant vandalism, as well as monumental entitlement, it's been around longer than you. So, this being the case, let me say this. The public outcry over the felling of the tree at Sycamore Gap is sentimental, overblown nonsense, and the fact that the two men found guilty of it have been given a custodial sentence is completely insane. Prison? For cutting down a Sycam...

What is happening?

An unpleasant, but in the grand scheme of things quite minor, incident occurred at a local school yesterday. Two lads entered the premises looking for another kid they wanted to assault. The school followed protocols and was locked down until the situation was resolved. Grim enough in and of itself, but not exactly a massive piece of news. Except, of course, on local Facebook pages, where a cast of many hang around visibly thirsting for events like this. This isn't a post about them, however. There is something desperately sad about a million posts on the same subject, everyone breathlessly recycling the same story without checking whether it might have already been covered. It speaks to an unfulfilled existence. Nor is this a post about Facebook and it's local pages, though they are a weird and interesting ecosystem. Were it not for running the pub, my Meta presence would be minimal, I need to be on there for work, and stuff like this is a necessary accoutrement. No, what depr...