Bathroom orienteering and stubborn fizz

Those of you who know me will know that I suffer from a formidable stubborn streak, this is not something that the nefarious Ms Nature gets along with. When I awoke this morning, after the ritual “ouch” caused by sleeping on a shoulder that I cannot sleep on without generating said exclamation, I realised that the knee was not in best of shape.

My knee not wanting to play is very common and I am used to it so I went about my morning without straightening that leg, well almost. Whilst brushing my teeth my mind wandered and I felt compelled to straighten the leg out and see ‘if it was that bad’ after all I am firm believer in mind over matter. The result was, I guess, inevitable and found me collapsed on the floor in pain. I would like to say that I have learnt from this experience but I think that we both know this is not the case.

In other falling over related news I can tell you that in the early hours of Saturday morning I awoke for a toilet break and was most proud that I remembered the presence of an acrow prop outside of the bathroom door. With my mental map fully updated I headed to the bathroom and avoided the gaping hole in the floor only to stub my toe on the board that the acrow sits atop before headbutting said steel pole. I think that this is what they call suffering for your art!

In other Ms Nature alerts the new movements associated with cutting and splitting wood have given her the opportunity to play up but I think that she is weakening. The current sensation is a continuous ‘fizzing’ in both wrists interspersed with occasional stabbing pain. I appreciate that fizzing is not the most descriptive of explanations but it really is the most accurate that I can come up with, it’s just like the fluids in the wrists are churning continuously. This is, of course, just posturing from Ms Nature and will subside once I beat her into submission and she accepts the new movements required.

It would be wrong of me not to take this opportunity to update you on the works at the Plough, this week is a slow week while we await the delayed steel but things are still looking pretty good….. terrifying but good.

Below is one of the two loads of rubble that have been removed to make a lighter, fitter pub.

This little guy didn’t spot the impending doom of a chimney being sealed up.

Starting to take shape.

Can you see what it is yet?

Nearly through.

The new room with temporary skylights !

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It’s only a wall….

Welcome to the biggest building project so far at the Plough. I am currently confined to a bedroom and a bathroom upstairs and am living in a perpetual inch of dust. I was going to share this experience on the pubs web page but I figure that it will be picture hungry and so more suited to the blog.

So what is the project? Well there is a significant amount of fluidity around the edges but in simple terms it involves the removal of an existing dividing wall and 8 chimneys in order to open up the trading space, a little…. Of course the wall that we are speaking of is 15″ thick and, well its a pub.

First off, for those who have not seen the pub, let me show you the starting points:

Bar

Middle Room

Upstairs

So from this you should get the general idea, take out the large middle wall and open ‘bar’ into ‘middle room’. The reason for the removal of the upstairs room is simple efficiency, it is ‘easier’ to take it down and rebuild a block wall than to try to support it while we insert the new steel.

Interestingly this project has always been accepted readily. Whenever I have mentioned it people nod approval and say things like ‘it makes sense’ and ‘its a good idea’, that is until a couple of weeks before we started. It was at this, later, point that I started to hear sharp intakes of breath and phrases such as ‘wow that’s a big job’ and ‘that’s some wall’, always handy because that’s a time when my own confidence is at its lowest.

So next up is day one, this is one day of work and demonstrates the madness of my ideas and the fact that, sometimes, I shouldn’t speak to people who agree with my insanity.

This floor would come up nice

Maybe not….

Call that a wall?

Built to last

Having covered everything in a (not so) fine layer of dust and introduced a new doorway the best thing to do, as always, was to carry on regardless.

Day two looked like this:

Open plan living?

It’s all the rage

The middle room

Cosy fire place…

 

I won’t maintain a daily log as such but expect a post on this subject from time to time when things look interesting or progress has been made.

AMD a shilling and a Rose

I know that it may seem that there has been an avalanche of posts recently but hey welcome to the winter. Tonight I had a conversation regarding the removal of the middle wall, a job that is committed for October (2 weeks away) and my friend ended the conversation with the famous, and incredulous,  words “how much?”

I don’t want anybody to think that I am sleeping well at the moment. The sheer enormity of the task, the disruption and the cost is far from understood and, to be fair, that terrifies me. It is a task that is needed, it is way earlier in the schedule than anticipated and, following a poor summer, way earlier than I am comfortable with but it is the right thing to do. If there is one legacy that I want to leave the Plough with then it is doing right by her.

So we will complete this task, it may be by hook or by crook but it will be done. The pub will look better for it and all agree, I am not sure that I will look better for it but that remains to be seen. For those who know me they will know that this level of risk is way outside of my comfort zone, I am not the man who bets his shirt on a horse (well I wasn’t). So there are two people whose odd philosophies guide me now and neither have their well deserved fame.

Both have been mentioned before in posts but, since I am awake and stressing, I will give them a more formal recognition now:

• Anna Marie Damgaard Kristensesen (AMD) – A business turnaround executive who gave me the most wonderful, and at the time overlooked, insight into the need to spend your way out of failure. Every time that I pay a works invoice I remember her philosophy and think that she is probably making somebody else sign another invoice!
• Andrew Raymond – In the face of adversity this man can find a shilling and throw it at the problem, admittedly the problem probably needs a pound but he will throw that shilling bloody hard anyway.  Every time that I stock my cellar at least one keg has his words ringing in my head “if you haven’t got it you can’t sell it”. Most importantly Andrew introduced me to the snowball effect where you keep throwing money at a problem and eventually it will be ok, or the snowball will get bigger and end us all. Luckily neither myself or Andrew know the end answer so we just keep throwing.

I can’t finish the post without thanking Dave Rose for being the mucker that kept me up for another half hour to write this bloody post! I love the Plough and if “it will all come right in the end” isn’t a business plan then clearly it should be.

Dust, DNA and Empathy – I need a pint

Before I start I would like to just reassure everyone that I am not having a crisis of confidence or any such silliness. This post is not a continuation on a theme, well maybe it is but it isn’t supposed to be it’s just the way the timing goes.

I happened to have 5 minutes to kill before an appointment yesterday when I was stood at a demolition site, an old sorting office I believe. The machines had removed a large part of the building and this opened a view into several offices on the top floor as well as a services room on the ground floor. Where many would see dust, noise and nuisance I saw history being dismantled.. I see this all of the time in old buildings, I don’t just see empty offices but I see generations of staff progressing through their career. I see the young man proud to have made that step from blue to white collar but still never truly feeling like he belongs ‘upstairs’. I can see the congratulations as people move on and families grow, all of the stuff that happens everywhere but will never again happen here.

In the services room I can see the education of young sparkies learning their trade, including the sweat, bruises and frustration. The big office on the left hand side with a view of the park will have been a senior one inhabited previously by both the beloved and the reviled, it comes with the territory. The building has echoes of retirees fondly recounting new plans but also those who quietly mourned their own loss of purpose. The building will have seen shifts spent wishing to be anywhere else but also shifts spent gratefully in the solace of work. The toil within this building will have funded generations of households as they struggled through lean times and enjoyed the more bountiful.

I can see the dozens of times that the “writing was on the wall” as new systems, machines or routines were introduced, each new introduction eventually becoming the favoured tradition only to be displaced by the next great idea. I know that the inevitability of closure will have led to a perverse confidence that it wouldn’t happen ensuring that there was no real preparation for the end. At the end I can see the shock and the distasteful picking over of the building and its contents. There will have been a palpable sense of loss as other parts of the business identify what they will salvage and transplant into other sites assisted by staff that are seeing out their notice.

All of this I see in a building and perhaps that is where my empathy lies although I am not sure why. It could be that as a young railwayman during privatisation, and long after, I watched the decimation of a great industrial heritage but I don’t think so. I like to think it is an Engineer’s trait, we are more tied to the buildings that we inhabit than other people because we share a physical bond. Those dirty workshop floors are not just stained with grease they are stained with the sweat and blood of us and our predecessors, we can honestly say that our DNA is in a building. The further you go back in the history of our trade the more blood, sweat, limbs and even lives were lost achieving what needed to be achieved.

It is in these buildings and their services that asbestos quietly crept into lungs before claiming years of life like some natural tax inspector. Too many substances, processes and activities to name have reduced the length or quality of the lives of those of us that just have to make and repair things, new ones keep appearing at a regular rate. So for me it is the inherent tie between Industrial Engineers and their environment, going back through the generations that breeds my empathy with old buildings.

This is not solely the plight of Engineers though, it is also the plight of many modern day publicans. There is no glamour or wealth in the licensed trade anymore, it has long since departed, but there is history in these buildings. Not text book history, not always tangible history but a history of life lived, of young becoming old, christenings and wakes and hey all of those parties had to happen somewhere. Just knowing that a building has been a social hub for generations makes it call out to me to protect it and hey if we don’t keep traditional pubs alive then one day your grandchildren will be asking what they used to be like.

Hey that could be my new pub slogan “From wetting your head to sprinkling your ashes and every event in between, we are here for you”

 

Check where you left your smile, it may no longer be there

I read, with sadness, of the decline of the wonderful art-deco style Grand in Sandown on the Isle. This is a wonderful building set in wide lawns opposite the beach. Sadly the building is owned by a ‘rot and redevelop’ type whose means of dealing with the planning authorities is to leave the building to decay to the point that they will pretty much accept anything. 

Sandown is a coastal town, much like my home, and these towns have suffered badly over the last ten years. It really worries me that the moronic planning system that we have does nothing to protect the fabric of these delightful buildings and their iconic status as landmarks. Anyone heading north out of Sandown would instantly recognise the grand and tens of thousands would recognise it as a family holiday location. A quick scan of the review sites reveals that as recently as 2013 people were raving about helpful staff trying to make the best of a tired building. Buildings do not decay overnight they decay because of long term neglect, where is the local authority during this? 

I have said before that I don’t believe in owning a pub I think that one can only be the custodian of the building. It is our job to protect and develop the fabric of the building for future generations. I know that my view is romantic and not everybody shares it but it really should not be so easy to take on a grand building and then suck its life out. Obviously businesses change and the economy cannot always support all of them, the licensed trade has seen this more than most, but we must do more to preserve our landscape. I can already hear the shouts of modernisation and need for housing but people need leisure spaces and pretty places. Housing estates are, in the main, dreary and soulless places let’s not let the country turn into one. 

I think that private funding should not absolve you of producing a business plan and that this plan should be shared with a local authority. When a person takes over one of these landmark buildings their business plan should be reviewed and set against a break price. All of the normal support for the business should occur of course, the best outcome is a trading and viable business after all. But an annual review against the business case could be used to ensure that the model is truly viable and that, more importantly, it is sustaining the building. I don’t for one minute want to restrict people from changing buildings or their use but an annual review would tell us if the ‘business’ was simply draining money from the venue and not preserving it. I am not alone in my thinking, looking at all of the hard work that my friends Andrew and Helen have put into their pub shows that some people really do want to preserve their premises. 

If the annual business plan review showed that the business was, in effect, trading the building to death then the local authority would be able to step in and buy at an artificially low break price. This element of planning would ensure that the people buying these businesses had a real and tested plan. Yes it would create a risk for the owners but we should not be so adverse to risk it forms a valuable check, in this case against greed. For most of us there is a real risk in business and perhaps where there is not we should pay closer attention to the plans if we want to protect our buildings. 

I have added a picture of the Grand and also of the gloriously tacky Wight City whose fate has gone the same way this year and is now boarded. The Wight City complex was an arcade, a café, a pub, nightclub and holiday lets before the owners concluded it was not viable. The building was shut this year and the owners applied to develop the site although at the moment I believe that they have been declined. Perhaps if the option to redevelop our history into accommodation didn’t exist then we would fight harder for alternative uses. I don’t for one minute think that the aging Wight City complex was a commercial gem or that its owners were making huge profits. My concern is that they are allowed to end anybody’s chances of retaining the building. In the glory days they may have earned good money and the current revenues therefore seem unsustainable but that is not to say that another operator couldn’t come up with a viable plan. 

Our seaside adventures did not take place in housing estates or gardens and our children deserve the opportunities that we had. I want children to grow up enthralled by the mystical scent of fried donuts and the dusty ghost train; I want them to remember how brave they felt standing on a wooden slatted pier staring down at the ocean. Our childhood memories are of the Wight Cities of the world unashamedly gaudy and strung in bright flashing lights. We might have to section off some of these buildings and look at alternative uses. To knock down and redevelop buildings whose very fabric is infused with the smiles and laughter of  generations is not only a crime it is irreversible and our children will never forgive us.

 

 

Hauntings and failed assassination attempts

One of those odd crossover moments this weekend talking to friends at the pub. Having debated spontaneous glass failure now on two fleets at work it followed me to the pub. The current design of Carlsberg glass is suffering the same failure. A glass left alone and undisturbed will just shatter. Apparently the manufacturer has changed his process to prevent this failure mode although he also says that it is caused by handling. As if to prove this not to be the point we were treated to an empty glass on the bar exploding yesterday. Obviously I assumed the ex-wife was trying to save money on assassins and readied myself for the next try. Nothing else happened so either my ex-wife selected an incompetent assassin and supplied only one round or the glasses are defective.

Now my ex-wife is neither generous nor genius but when it comes to dispatching me I can’t believe that she would skimp. The issue of spontaneous glass failure has plumbed new depths, it is not enough in buildings and on trains it has reached the pub. Heavy panels cladding tall buildings and train station roofs were scary but the receptacle that holds our beer? a line has been crossed. I sense Ms Nature’s nefarious hand in this matter, who else would turn on our beer?

Whilst on the subject of pubs, I have posted many times on the fact that publicans are only ever custodians of the building. When Andrew set about dismantling walls over the weekend I asked him why there was a chair in the stairwell that he is blocking up. His answer was simply that the chair was there when he started so why move it, I guess that’s fair. I can imagine though that in 20 years or so some bright spark will open up the stairwell and discover the chair amongst the rubble. What will our next publican think of his discovery? Well if he is good then I full expect to hear a story about the haunted chair entombed in the stairwell……

 

Love the pub

Me and Pete popped down to the Green Man today to say hello to Mick. The Green Man, as I have said before, is a pub in its final days. Apparently the latest is that the Green Man will end it’s days in September. The site itself is on the market for around £1.5M, the site may even be worth something close to that.

The sad thing is that the business, even with the best operator, doesn’t justify that price. The pub is not in a great location for profit. The pub is in the best location for its locals, it has great footfall and could earn someone a living. It’s a great building and could be a fantastic venue, but it won’t make a millionaire. This is the trouble with the state of the licensed trade today, there is no allowance for purpose. There is no value associated with the characters and the community, no price on friendships.

For decades this pub has stood, it has made and broken landlords in its time. Children have been born and grown up here, lifestyles have been made and savings lost. How many wedding receptions, christenings and wakes have been held there? The sounds of children, adults and the elderly are embedded in the fabric of the building. First dates have flourished into love here, hearts have been broken to.

We maintain historic buildings and gardens but, as a nation, we put no value in the buildings that are such a feature in our lives. The thing I find most odd is that when I was younger and the licensed trade was doing well, we respected landlords. Today, with the trade on its knees there is little respect for what are the remaining guardians of our history.

Yes there are many that have fallen into the trade, enticed by PubCo deals and imaginary success. But there are many that work long hours to care for our cherished public houses. Only those of us that know the calling of the licensed trade will recognise it as just that, a calling. We could earn more and work less elsewhere but we love the trade and we love the fabric of our buildings. The hard times are weathered because for every year we keep the doors open we add a year to the rich history of the building.

Next time you visit a pub check the car, it’s not high end, check the landlord, he is the exhausted looking fella. You chose where to drink, they are wedded to offering you that choice. Go on, this weekend hug a publican