Coastalblog

It's been silly season in British politics for a while now, but as this lame, mortally wounded administration stumbles blindly on, praying for miracles, it's only getting weirder.  A particularly baffling symptom which, unless you're as terminally addicted to politics twitter as I am, has probably blissfully passed you by is the campaigning by the Conservative MP for Uxbridge, Steve Tuckwell, he of the mildly successful anti-ULEZ hold in Johnson's old seat which prompted Sunak to go all-in on "driver's rights". Upon what pressing issue has Tuckwell chosen to nail his colours to the mast? Is he back on ULEZ? Trying to wring a bit more political capital from the world's most divorced men taking angle grinders to traffic lights? Is he perhaps pulling the regular Conservative Parliamentary hopeful trick of focusing on the woefulness of local services and blaming the council, while quietly avoiding mentioning that said council has had its budget slashed to ...

There are a few days in the calendar which Hospitality staff would prefer to avoid if at all possible. The days when the people who don't really know how to behave in restaurants come out to play, the overbooked days, the days when people walk in and are frankly astonished,  nay,  outraged that no table is available for them. New Year's Eve? Yes, to an extent, though that's generally mitigated by high prices, the Christmas season in general is a cockpit for terrible behaviour on the part of the general public, so NYE doesn't really stand out so much as you'd think. Valentine's Day is always a shithouse, not only because all of your tables becomes tables of 2, so the amount of people you do is generally quite disappointing, but because it's normally booked by blokes, so doesn't fill up until the last second (yes, yes, a terrible generalisation, I know, also true). But it does have the upside of there generally being a spectacular break-up to gawp at, plus...