Coastalblog

 I have had a brief holiday.  This isn't an entirely remarkable turn of events, it happens from time to time. Not as often as the happy, gilded folk who occupy my Insta feed, it would appear, or the University acquaintances whose lives would seem to be one long roundelay of chic European mini-breaks but, nevertheless, holidays occur though, perhaps not quite with the frequency with which, in an ideal world, I would wish In this instance, in an even rarer turn of events  we were sans offspring. Oh yes. Sorry lads. Thus is because Mrs Coastalblog and I went away to celebrate our twentieth wedding anniversary (Miracles, etc, less for murder, etc, if you could just dump all the jokes within these parentheses and then we could all get on with our lives) and because we're the sort of perverts that like going to places by train, and going to places we're not overly familiar with, we wound up in Newcastle. A fine, handsome city with much to recommend it, but what I wish to consid...

First up, apologies for the as ever intermittent nature of posting here. It's been a year. Suffice to say all that stuff you hear about hosputality being in serious trouble is, well, it's not far off. Working harder than ever, busier than ever and yet still, somehow, treading water and getting nowhere.  This isn't, however, a post to whinge (though it could perhaps serve as a gentle reminder that if you do have a pub, cafe or restaurant that's dear to you, maybe make an excuse to pop in sooner rather than later, if you can), more to explain that the pub is taking up even more of my headspace than usual, hence lack of posts/contact/general human interaction, as rhe answernto the the eternal question, how do you more with less, is generally, um, me. That said, the apology isn't too distantly related to what I wanted to write about today, which is the peculiar joy to be had from being first in the kitchen of a morning. Naturally, as the work piles up, and to keep hours...

I have written here several times down the years about customer complaints, both justified and idiotic. Working in hospitality they are an ineivitability. No matter how good you are, how consistent, you will get complaints. Very few of them stick in the memory, but some, by virtue of their extreme idiocy, do. And one popped into my mind as I was plating up a dish this lunchtime, and I thought, why not, it's as good a thing to write a blog about as any. It's also an entertaining example of how events can play out in ways you may not expect at the time. It sticks in the mind as it combined stupidity with a petty malice and venality which leaves me with no qualms about taking the piss out of it publicly. I rarely let bad reviews lie, if I feel they're unfair I might demur, if I feel they're reasonable I'll make a point of apologising. If they're stupid I'll take pleasure in replying very politely. This one got ignored. It happened on a Sunday, which is another ...

Not a slow news week, is it? Still, the papers can't be wall to wall imminent end of the world (though one could argue that some outlets could probably do with a spot more of it) all the time can they? Need a little levity amongst the hydrocarbon-fuelled misery, which is presumably the reason that the Graun helped to fill its pages with  this  piece, a hoary old retread of a story as old as, well, since kids were allowed in pubs where "some" (a word which does an incredible amount of heavy lifting in the press) Landlords are banning children from their pubs. It cites dreadful behaviour, disruption of trade, surly parents, I'm fairly sure I've read it a few times before (though this one does have the bonus story of a child disappearing down an open cellar hatch, which is kind of fun) This is not, by any stretch of the imagination, news, there are many pubs which don't welcome children, a situation which was largely the norm until relatively recently. I well rem...

Sitting here at my kitchen table, enjoying the early spring sunshine that still has the bones of the winter cold, it's hard to believe that nearly a quarter of the year is gone. Regular readers (if one can be a regular reader of something I publish so erratically) will be aware that I hold myself to a series of targets every year, weekly, monthly and yearly. I almosy never achieve any of them, but it's a way of keeping myself accountable, gets me down to the gym on days I don't feel like it, makes sure I keep writing, gives me extra reasons to read and watch new things. Various pluses to my existence which may well disappear into a slough of inertia otherwise. For I am by nature a deeply lazy man. I know this to be what I am like, and so take countermeasures. Unfortunately I seem to have overshot somewhat and am now working harder than at any other point in my life, whuch veterans of the Source years may find hard to believe, but that's a slightly different issue. Anywa...

Slowly but surely, the pub becomes home in unexpected ways. We've lived in for a couple of years now (though you wouldn't know it from the lack of progress in decorating upstairs, all I will say in my defence is that the job takes up a lot more of your time than you ever imagine it will), and it's a very different sort of life to the one I was used to. One curious manifestation of it now being a family home, rather than just a business with am empty flat up top, is you can't help but have life intrude on the business, be it the regulars now used to the sight of my youngest casually wandering behind the bar to pour one of his two-a-week-and-that's-it fizzy drinks or the sudden disappearance of queues for the bathroom, as we now effectively have five toilets. One form this takes is the gradual colonisation of the pub with the spill-over from my book collection. With space at a premium upstairs, duplicates or read once and unlikely to re-read books find their way downs...