Coastalblog

It's rare that a shock in the world of Hospitality crosses over to the mainstream news. But with the news emerging yesterday that Le Gavroche is to close, we had one of those moments of a topic which is a something if an obsession in our industry actually becoming public, a very visible symptom of a disease which has been incubating for a fair old while now. Talk amongst chefs has changed in the last few years, as we've navigated the successive shocks of Brexit and Covid, from who's doing what, who's rolling out, who's going for a star and are they worth it to the simpler questions: who's going under? how are you keeping going? When the news about Le Gav broke, my sous and I exchanged a look and asked the same question, if Michel Roux can't make it work, what hope for the rest of us? That wasn't the only closure I heard of yesterday, but it's unlikely you've heard about the other one. About nineish, just as I was ticking off my fish order, a guy ...

I appear to have moved into the pub. Now, I don't wish to give the impression that this has come as a complete surprise to me, we'be been planning to do so since shortly after I bought it, but still, it's sort of snuck up on me and now I'm waking up and thinking what happened? How come I'm here? The reason for this discombobulation is that this move was initially a temporary measure. Mrs Coastalblog had some relatives coming to stay, and it made sense to put them up in our house while we decamped to the flat. It's still a work in progress, but a mad week of cleaning and carting stuff around made it habitable. I had a suspicion that once we were in we'd be back and forth for a few weeks. As with many of my hunches, I was completely and utterly wrong. As it turned out, once we were here, we were here. Things moved at pace and, now our kitchen appliances have been installed, there's no going back, the old house is unusable. It's left me with slightly mi...

It is with no small degree of distress that I'm afraid to say I've been thinking about Robert Jenrick. I know, I know, in this beautiful world with its myriad of wonders, thetre are many other things about which I could think, the play of sunlight upon dappled water, the laughter of my children, the song thrush calling from the sycamore tree a few yards away from where I type this. Yet the shiny, faintly porcine features of the Minister for Immigration keep bubbling up into my consciousness. It's a pain in the arse, I tell you. A few years ago on here I wrote a piece entitled The cruelty is the point in which I argued that some policies are cruelty simply for the sake of it, pour decourager les autres . I was reminded of that recently when I listened to Jenrick defending his unpleasant, petty decision to order murals at a migrant children's centre to be painted over. You've probably heard the story already; deeming pictures of cartoon characters "too welcoming...

For a number of reasons I rarely tend towards the autobiographical here. I'm not really sure why. Looking back to the earliest posts here, I didn't have any qualms about it then. But then, I was much more convinced of my own capacity to be interesting in those days. Of late, this blog has been more about things than me, at least I've tried to make that the case. Writing about oneself seems to me to be a fairly spectacular act of egotism at best, monstrously gauche at worst. It occurs to me, however, that this is somewhat self-defeating since, at a stage of my life when I'm struggling to write about anything at all, this is one of the few things I am qualified to write about. I am now, at least, relatively confident that the world doesn't need me adding my opinions to the torrent that we are subjected to anytime we're unwise enough to stray too close to the internet. So I suppose it makes sense that I step back a bit, look inward a bit, and reflect. Become less b...

 There was a TV series a few years ago where various men of a certain age chuntered into the camera about the vexing iniquities of the modern age. Grumpy Old Men was a very British sort of programme. A celebration of whining where the whingers were in on the joke. Futile raging against minor annoyances is, I would argue, one of the pillars of our National Sensibility, or stereotype, at any rate. The point of me dragging up this quite minor TV show is that, at the time, I chortled along with the joke, while at the same time missing the essential tragedy. While they were nodding and winking along to their own grumpiness, and celebrating their own pettiness, it was nevertheless an incontrovertible fact that these were opinions that they held deeply, that the world was passing them by. I've thought about this a lot recently, as I too descend into middle age (45 now, no getting away with "young" any more), I try to avoid my thinking ossifying, I try to question my own prejudic...

I wonder why I'm still doing this. Here I am, but why? I'm pretty sure a fairly recent (ish, well, recent by my standards) post has posited the same question, but repeating myself is pretty much all I've got at the minute, so that's what'll have to do, here, now, while I wait for a couple of tables to leave. "Might as well" isn't really the most compelling reason to write, is it? I mean, it's not the worst reason, it's not doing any harm, but it's hardly a passionate, driven compulsion. It's not having to write or else your head might burst. Might as well. February the 11th. That's the last time that I posted something here. Seems a long time ago, is a long time ago, really. At least by the standards of the content driven age, where four posts a day is slacking off, I might as well be chalking some mammoths on a cave wall. I'm not built for these times, I don't have time for these times. Seriously, the one thing that always ...

"Left-wing economic establishment" now, is it? Yes, Liz Truss is BACK baby, and absolutely none of it was her fault, as it turns out. The fever dream that was her premiership, with mortgage rates soaring, markets crashing and billions wiped off pension funds was nowt to do with her. Rather, it was that her policies were thwarted by the *checks notes* "Left-wing economic establishment." Leaving aside the obvious jokes about the bonds markets being hotbeds of Marxism, Our Liz's spectacular re-engagement with politics is an absolutely prime example of one of the few things this Government's ever been any good at, to whit, calling people names. If you can remember far enough back, I think it was George Osborne that started it, when he attempted to demonise everyone on benefits as "shirkers". It didn't really stick, largely because it sounded like something out of a minor Dickens novel. Big Tegsy May had more luck with "Citizens of Nowhere...

A brief blog this week, because the temptation to rant is too strong. I'm only posting this because the story it concerns, the  abduction  of children by criminal gangs from hotels run by the Home Office, seems to have bewilderingly little traction in the mainstream press. I'm not qualifying the word children with the term asylum seeker. Because that's the point of this blog. The second you do that, you are othering them, you are trying to lessen the impact of this horror which is taking place on British soil at this present time. When the odious Jonathan Gullis roared idiotically that "they shoudn't have come here", when Nick Robinson on the Today  programme leaned heavily on the racist's bogeyman du jour, Albania, when they paid some scant attention to this story, they were trying to distract from the fundamental point. That children are being abducted by criminal gangs, and Suella Braverman is somehow still in a job, even though this is happening on her...

Blearrgh It is a truth universally acknowledged in hospitality circles that everyone gets ill in January. You've been wound up tight in December, surviving on not enough sleep and probably too much to drink, your immune system isn't in the best of shape, the moment you relax your body goes right, you bastard, now you're for it. So I was expecting it, happens every year. What I hadn't factored into account was that this was the Winter of The Multiple Lurgies, where everyone's immune systems are in ruins from two years of covid and various diseases stalk the land in unhappy conjunction, so when the chef flu got me, I wasn't as ready as I should be. After a busy New Year's Day in the pub (following a frankly unhinged New Year's Eve in the pub) I wasn't well rested, my defences weren't high, but still, I felt okay on the Monday morning. Indeed, we took a little trip to Martin Mere, so I could get the year's birding off to a flier (because that...

It's commonplace at this time of year for things like this to do some sort of head-scratching look back at the year just gone. Some whimsical piece full of wonderment at the twists and turns the last go round the sun has taken. Cor, they say, I never saw that coming. Blimey, who'd have expected that. Well, I thought about it, and then decided not to. Because whichever way you slice it, 2022 has been an absolute shithouse for a heck of a lot of people, and it seems a bit tasteless going coo, who remembers "surprised by cake"? crikey, that was a laugh, eh?  Likewise, I am irritated by our media class's tendency to treat politics, which is the stuff of real people's actual lives, as though it were all some jolly entertaining spectator sport. The disastrous conduct of our ruling party has actively served to make everyone in the country worse off this year. It shouldn't really be the subject of a parlour game where someone has to remember precisely how many day...

     What would you think if, when you asked someone how they were, they replied "OK"? Would you take that at face value, or regard it as being indicative of deeper problems?      I ask because this has been on my mind a little of late. Mrs Coastaltown asked me how I was one day. I was okay, I said so. Whats's up? She said. Nothing's up, I said, I'm okay, I'm fine. Reader, I was, I was fine.      What would you think if, when you asked someone how they were, they replied "fine"? Would you take that at face value, or regard it as being indicative of deeper problems?      I'm being slightly facetious here, but I have been wondering a little recently about how we perceive language, and how we place too much weight on hyperbole. You can't simply be fine, you have to be amazing, so good, living your best life. Things aren't bad, they're a disaster. Eminently believable events become unbelievable. The comedian Gary Delaney has a good...

To my mild surprise, I came home one day last week to find one of my sons, who shall remain nameless, reading a copy of one of my chapbooks. "Hello Dad" he said, in an off-hand manner, before tossing it on the table. "Not really my sort of thing" I wasn't, I hasten to add, particularly offended by this; his thing is anime, and he's eleven. I don't recall being a particular fan of procedural poetry myself at that age, to be entirely honest with you, I was more a fan of really intently watching the opening titles of Baywatch . Indeed, as with so much of my life, writing poetry was just something I sort of fell into and it turned out I was alright enough at it to publish a bit and read a bit and...well, not much else really. And that's fine, I never had dreams of fame or success from writing, it was always just something I did.  To quote Homer Simpson: aim low kids, aim so low that nobody will realise if you fail. This isn't to say that I didn't...

This post will be about several things, but it won't be about The Queue. I don't need to explain  that any further, you know it the one I mean, the one that has dominated the national conversation to a perplexing degree over the last few days. I knew when HRH popped her little bejewelled clogs that I was going to be out of step with the majority if my fellow countrymen. Not so much due to my lack of support for the monarchy, though that's definitely a factor, but more due to my distaste for greetings card sentiment. And, dear me, but we've had that in spades. Grieving, I understand. Grief and I, as longer term readers may recall, are well acquainted. And I'm not so arrogant as to tell others how to grieve; but it does seem, from the perspective of one utterly unmoved by the death of someone I didn't know, that we as a country are...enjoying this a little too much? Wallowing a little? I do understand it, to a degree. Brenda represents one of the last links to whe...

Now, after typing it,  I realise that the title basically sounds like a racist AC/DC cover version, but before you cast your phone aside in disgust at my, now you come to think of it inevitable middle aged slide into reactionary politics, hold on a mo, for this is merely the news that, after a pleasurable couple of years of semi-retirement, your super soaraway Coastalblog is back on the stoves full-time. (I hadn't realised you weren't, you quite reasonably say, fair enough, so to recap...) When I took the pub over I reasoned that I was going to be to preoccupied with various bits and bobs that needed doing front of house, and wouldn't be able to give the kitchen the attention it deserved. I was right in this, to be fair, paperwork, repairs and renovations, navigating the uncertain waters of Covid, all of this took a lot of time up. So I handed the kitchen reins over to my sous chef, Lyndsey (who has, I should say, done an absolutely sterling job). That's me done, I thou...

I've been trying, I really have. I've been refraining as much as possible from commenting on the unedifying tussle to be our next entirely unelected PM. As Mark Drakeford so tartly and correctly observed, there's nothing I can say about them that they haven't already said about each other. Indeed, I've been trying to stay off the politics as much as possible,the increasing madness of the last few years has been overwhelming, and for the sake of one's sanity alone it's necessary to keep the whole fucking shambles at arms length. How else can one respond to Liz Truss contradicting her own press release of a few hours before? Or Sunak cosplaying as a dictator because he thinks that'snwhat the membership wants? But the problem is, you may want to avoid politics, but politics sure as hell doesn't want to avoid you. And at this shaky point in our history, as the economy teeters on the brink of recession, and the real-world impact of climate change becomes ...

Dizzy heights of fame for your humblish correspondent this week, as I and my esteemed boozer merit an article in none other than the Ormskirk Advertiser (to which I cannot link because, in the year of our Lord 2022, it mystifyingly doesn't have a website other than some convoluted accounts only thing which, frankly, I can't be arsed dealing with. So we'll do this the old fashioned way)  In a nutshell, I stuck a food bank collection point in the pub. That's pretty much the size of it. Must have been a slow news week (admittedly, every week in Ormskirk is a slow news week). What I found noteworthy about it (besides it being literally the only time I've ever been described as "kind-hearted") was how much of the article I've actually written. It's pulled together from a couple of quotes and various Facebook updates. Nowt wrong with that (though I was wondering whether I should invoice them, seeing as how I've effectively written half of it), I alwa...

So the plane didn't take off, but it doesn't matter, because it's a wedge issue. God help us, this is how these people think. Somewhat abstruse, as opening lines go, but then, the whole situation is. And it has got me despairing even more than usual as to what's become of us as a nation. I shall clarify, the flight, of course, was Priti Patel's brainchild, the rendition of asylum seekers to Rwanda. I'm not going into that any further. If you feel anything but repugnance towards this racist, morally bankrupt, unworkable and ludicrously expensive pipe dream then, I beg of you, fuck off. Then fuck off some more. No, this piece isn't to comment on the policy, it's nor even one of those "slow descent into fascism" bits which people are so fond of now, there's no point. It's self-evident. No, what this piece is about is the motivation, revealed in hindsight, of the racist, abhorrent, imbecilic and embarrassing piece of shit idea about putting...

As regular readers will know, I'm prone to starting the odd post or two with faux-modest, but in reality self-aggrandising observations about how often I find myself at odds with my fellow citizens. I don't really mean to, but there you have it. Opposition is very much the name of the Coastalblog game. And so it is with the state of my garden. Or rather, the pub's. I am blessed in my gaff with a very pleasant garden, which, when the weather's nice, pretty much guarantees me a busy day ( I know, hard old life, isn't it?). But what could I possibly find to argue with the general public with here? Dear reader: mowing. Now, I don't let it run completely wild (much as I'd like to), arsey though I am, I'm aware that it's helpful for people to be able to get the nice benches I spent so long building. But I don't share the English obsession with a tidy lawn, indeed, I'm positively anti it. I did no mow May, and was pleased with the riot of daisies an...

Last week, I had one of the more head-scratching encounters of my professional career. Not so much the encounter itself, more the aftermath. Working in hospitality as I have for more years than I care to remember, I've accrued a lengthy back catalogue of weird complaints. Anyone in my line of work has, industry vets will trade them like playing cards: the gazpacho that was cold, the waitress that tossed her hair "sarcastically", the medium steak being medium rare, while his medium-rare was medium, the table that refused to believe that you couldn't fit a table of ten in on a fully booked New Year's Eve and turned up anyway. So, when a worried-looking member of floor staff popped in and said that a table had complained about the sausages on the kids menu not being "child-friendly" I sighed, did a little eye-rolling and said don't worry, I'll pop out and talk to them. And this I did, I had thought there might be some issue with the plating, maybe t...

At the risk of harping on old themes, the writing has fallen by the wayside a bit in recent times, after a couple of years where I felt I was vaguely on top of things, and able to carve out a routine whereby I could make time to write, this year threw everything up in the air again. As is nearly always the case, there isn't any one particular cause, a variety of calls on one's time make the process of sitting down to put something down in writing harder, and before you know it, it's been so long that you almost can't imagine starting again. It certainly doesn't help things that this year has taken a turn for the seriously dark, and I'm not sure the world needs my opinions on things we all know to be awful. (Though I would observe that it makes a cruel mockery of all those people posting cheery facebook statuses at the end of the last couple of years about hooray that year's over, things can't get any worse! Stop it. Just stop it. You're all the equiv...