Coastalblog

Solipsism alert. Those of you with little appetite for self-absorbed navel-gazing, look away now. Coastalblog has been many things in its existence. It started because it seemed like a reasonable thing to do, turned into some frankly pretty unpleasant venting of spleen at people who probably didn't deserve quite  the level of opprobrium I was dishing out and down the years has been variously points-scoring, score-settling and inchoate howling with, hopefully, one or two more thoughtful essays sprinkled into the mix. What it has also always been, without my fully realising it, is, in part, a diary. This is handy, as I thought I'd come late to the noble and gentle art of writing a diary, when I realised that my thirties were passing in the blink of an eye (I know this is ground I've covered here before, but it's Sunday morning, and I've got to print the menus out for the pub, there are a few short moments of peace before the family erupt from their various beds and I

 As if chefs haven't had enough to deal with of late. The announcement in the Queen's Speech on Monday that bars and restaurants will soon be forced to display the calorie content of each dish felt, in these quarters at least, like a particularly dismal cherry of shit on tope of a cake that, for the last year and a bit, has been mad almost entirely of cack. That a Government panicking at the sight of its lardy populace wheezing their way towards costly health treatment has chosen to pick on restaurants is hardly surprising. The hospitality sector has been a favourite punchbag of health campaigners down the years, it's an easy target. And yes, burgers full of saturated fats, bread that is more sugar than flour, chicken which barely qualifies as food, all these are culpable in the steady fattening of our nation. As, too, is our national habit of throwing booze down our necks at reckless levels. But listing the calories on the menu? Really? In the interests of full disclosure,