Ho ho and, furthermore, ho. Ah yes, the festive season is upon us, a time which even those tangentially acquainted with Coastalblog will be dimly aware that your humble correspondent disappears beneath a blizzard of work ("Disappears?" you cry, "you were barely here in the first place", which is a reasonable point, and, this being the internet, I assume that you are all just and equitable people, as I'm sure everyone on the internet is, so I shall let you have that one, though a look back informs me that this has been my most prolific blogging year since, oooh, prior to fatherhood, so cut me some slack m'kay?), what with the knives to sharpen and the meals to send out and what have you. All very lively.
But this isn't the standard mea culpa / whinge / flimsy rationalisation for my shoddy and inept attempts to keep CB wheezing along in this, its 16th (!) year. Yep, I just checked, first post September 2003. So next year it can legally have sex. Nah, I realised years ago that this is, essentially, shouting into the void, but the way I figure it it's a more constructive way of doing so than just getting angry on Twitter. So here I sit, close to the start of December, a couple of livelier than average Christmas services under the belt and contemplate the rest of the festive season with something approaching equanimity.
The ten years I was at Source Christmas was always hell on stilts, in the nicest possible way. Being something of a one man band when in the kitchen, and under pressure to make as much money as possible in a short space of time, it was, of necessity, extremely hectic, lots of fun, but hectic, and the sort of hours that even the most understanding spouse would be inclined to raise an eyebrow at. Prior to that, exceedingly long-term readers may recall I was in Le Frog which was so ludicrously busy that it didn't matter how many staff there were, you were going to get mullered. Christmas to me meant simply hordes of drunks and boshing out some fairly mediocre food, the only pride to be taken in it was a grimly professional one at having "done the numbers", having "got through".
But that was the noughties, when people still ate out. In these more impecunious times, the hordes are still horde-ey, but not quite as much, plus, as I observed this weekend, the only people still going out for dinner are the same ones who were doing it fifteen years ago. They're the only ones with money, and they've slowed down a bit in the meantime. So I'm in the sweet spot of having staff, but not quite having to deal with the baying tides of times past (the fact that we charge a reasonable amount for our food may have something to do with that, too).
So yes, for once I can face Christmas without a sense of impending doom and the certain knowledge that I'm not going to see my family for a month. It might even, who knows, be fun?
But this isn't the standard mea culpa / whinge / flimsy rationalisation for my shoddy and inept attempts to keep CB wheezing along in this, its 16th (!) year. Yep, I just checked, first post September 2003. So next year it can legally have sex. Nah, I realised years ago that this is, essentially, shouting into the void, but the way I figure it it's a more constructive way of doing so than just getting angry on Twitter. So here I sit, close to the start of December, a couple of livelier than average Christmas services under the belt and contemplate the rest of the festive season with something approaching equanimity.
The ten years I was at Source Christmas was always hell on stilts, in the nicest possible way. Being something of a one man band when in the kitchen, and under pressure to make as much money as possible in a short space of time, it was, of necessity, extremely hectic, lots of fun, but hectic, and the sort of hours that even the most understanding spouse would be inclined to raise an eyebrow at. Prior to that, exceedingly long-term readers may recall I was in Le Frog which was so ludicrously busy that it didn't matter how many staff there were, you were going to get mullered. Christmas to me meant simply hordes of drunks and boshing out some fairly mediocre food, the only pride to be taken in it was a grimly professional one at having "done the numbers", having "got through".
But that was the noughties, when people still ate out. In these more impecunious times, the hordes are still horde-ey, but not quite as much, plus, as I observed this weekend, the only people still going out for dinner are the same ones who were doing it fifteen years ago. They're the only ones with money, and they've slowed down a bit in the meantime. So I'm in the sweet spot of having staff, but not quite having to deal with the baying tides of times past (the fact that we charge a reasonable amount for our food may have something to do with that, too).
So yes, for once I can face Christmas without a sense of impending doom and the certain knowledge that I'm not going to see my family for a month. It might even, who knows, be fun?
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