Tiers means tears

So the exciting news of yesterday was that the Isle of Wight was mentioned a number of times in parliament. Not just once but multiple times, I don’t doubt that we got enough mentions for some people to go so far as to look up where we are! Like proud parents the whole island collectively gasped at being called out by name, and it was on the TV.

Oh and yes we are in Tier 1 so we reopen on Wednesday under the old rules, not the very old rules, the latter rules from before shutdown. It goes without saying that I am tremendously sad for the venues across the country that will open with further restrictions and, indeed, cannot open at all.

I remain convinced that singling wet led pubs out and forcing them to close in Tier 2 is wrong and is based on a misunderstanding of the modern pub. I think so few MPs have used pubs since their younger years that when wet pubs are mentioned they picture the hedonistic, jostling booze fuelled parties of their youth.

I guess to some degree this is human nature. If we don’t do something for a while, don’t refresh our perspective, then our views become rose tinted. Your recollection of something is the good bits, sometimes the bad bits, not the mundane day to day stuff. Whilst we may all do this that does not excuse the politicians who should go out and refresh their perspective since they are charged with governing us.

So last night I settled down to watch Tom Kerridge ‘saving British pubs’, the final of a three part show. I must say that over the two previous shows I was pleasantly surprised to find a good selection of pubs and none of the normal ‘ you need fine dining’ as a stock answer which is what I had expected.

By a quirk of fate the third show was filmed around the first national lockdown. Perhaps there were due to be more but the crazy flu stopped play, I am not sure. So last night we watched publicans open their doors to minimal attendance as the government ordered people not to come to the pub. Then the devastating moment when they announced what we now refer to as LD1.

I would say that we all know how this episode ends but I guess that’s not true, we simply know what comes next. I was struck by the overwhelming feeling of loss. I expected it to be like watching a rerun but the Boris speech sent not so much a chill down my spine but a ball of ice into my stomach.

It sent me back to that awful night and the battle to put a brave face on the closure. I actually had to walk away from the TV for a bit rather than watch. When I came back one publican was saying ‘people think its great to be locked in a pub, its not, its empty’. This was the feeling that plagued me for LD1, the feeling that the building was not only bereft of people but somehow she had lost her soul.

Of all the experiences of my life this is the only one that ‘flashed back’ an it was not good. I think I can honestly say that I have (at some low level) PTSD over the pub closing.

When I was flicking through the licensee forums this morning a post caught my eye. A landlord in Cornwall was pointing out that although they are in Tier 1 and can open they do so under difficult circumstances. This particular pub was reduced to 6 tables, obviously no tourists and a very negative customer sentiment.

I think the current press view that all is normal in Tier 1 does us a disservice as, in reality, things are far from normal. We will reopen and we will do so with full table service, nobody standing at the bar, maximum table sizes of 6 and absolutely no standing (crazy flu loves vertical drinking). We will sign people in, remind them to wear masks and turn them away from a venue when it is barely half full.

We will suffer the abuse and ignorance that, I would imagine, will elevate again as people realise Tier 1 is still restricted. If we remain in Tier 1 for Christmas then BoJo has succeeded in his ambition not to be the ‘grinch’, he has passed that baton to us! It will be us that have to tell the three families, that are allowed to meet up and reside with each other, that they cannot occupy the same table in a pub.

The very purpose of hospitality is to be hospitable. The thing that we offer is the opportunity to meet people, to socialise and to engage in the banter of the pub. Many people who are not regular pub goers will still default to the pub when life takes a bad (or good) turn. It is where we go to celebrate, commiserate or to forget.

LD1 was awful, it was horrifying to see the pub empty day after day. It made me feel I had failed, somehow let the Plough down. I kept posting pictures of me at the bar with a pint, kept telling people we were getting ready for the opening, of course I did, that’s what we do. The truth is that in between all the work I spent a lot of time sat on the floor in ‘the corner’ struggling with the weight of the pub.

When we reopened we had the ‘rules’ the regularly changing, rules. The press was all (as now) patting us on the back because ‘the Great British pub is open’ again but it is not, far from it. In many cases we are working under constraints that appear to serve the sole purpose of ruining us.

Everything that we do in this trade is regulated by risk assessment and operating policies, written by us for our venues. This top down regulation takes no account of the venue and seems to show an absolute distrust of the competence of those of us in the trade. We all know that a crowd 6 deep at the bar would not be crazy flu safe but the old boy at 2pm doing his crossword presents no more risk sat at the bar than he does at a table.

Every venue in this country knows what they can do to operate with the minimum of risk to health and the large majority would be responsible. Of course there is an argument that some would be irresponsible and that is true, but no action is taken against those flagrantly disregarding the rules now.

Instead we have been ‘allowed’ to trade in such a manner that every day that we open the door we are effectively offering people a bad experience. We are working incredibly hard to offer an experience as far from that which we want to as is possible. We are told daily how rubbish it is being in the pub under the ‘rules’ whilst working harder and taking far less.

Now we have the added stress that every two weeks we could change Tier, up or down is life or death because wet led pubs can only trade in Tier 1. Trying to juggle having enough stock on hand with the risk of getting stuck with stock that will have to be wasted off. Christmas is normally a difficult juggling act with the complexities of additional trading days, restricted delivery days and lack of flex in the supply chain, this year will be far harder.

We have yet to see how the brewers react to the news that a large proportion of the on trade is not reopening next week and that we still don’t know what will happen at Christmas (we know there is no relaxation for pubs). It is likely that product ranges and supply chain restrictions will combine to form more late nights and failed deliveries.

So when you go to the pub please don’t be surprised to receive a negative reaction to “Bet you’re glad to be open” or “you’re the lucky one” and the inevitable “at least you are earning something”. We are tired, we are mentally drained and exhausted and we are juggling way more plates than we are used to. We are doing all this under rulings that seem determined to destroy our way of life.

We will keep doing this though, they won’t break us. We will keep doing this because not long after the announcement messages started coming in from people who wanted to know when we were reopening. All of those people who have missed the Plough, they are the soul, the reason why we do this and they are what keeps the old lady alive.

Empty jam and streetwalkers

I have had a number of people ask me for an update on my current health status so I shall start there today. I am struggling to beat Ms Nature down but, like any pigheaded man, I haven’t let that stop me.  Mornings and evenings are becoming more painful as the wrists seek to reduce my ‘window of operation’ and righty has remembered what fun it is to generate sharp spasms at random times.

Of course I have considered the increased levels of pain and the potential causes and consequences and arrived at a structured plan to rehabilitate. There are two facets to my plan, the first is to ignore any pain and the second is to increase the exercise. My approach has yet to yield improvements but I am confident that a good dose of stubborn will change that in due course.

In other news I think I experience cabbie jealousy over the weekend when picking up my children. Despite several attempts at conversation the driver was resolutely mute until my children got in the car, at which point he wouldn’t shut up. This was more than just conversation, I swear every time my daughter opened her mouth he had to tell a better story, there was a definite case of “he is my friend”.

I would also like to share with you the insanity of tourists. On Sunday I watched as a couple slowly realised that there was no longer a rush to get their young child to the toilet, nothing unusual in that. They proceeded to change said child’s clothing and pack up the rest of their kit and at this point made an odd decision. They placed the wet, or more accurately soiled, clothes on the wall, I can’t fathom why. I can see that they didn’t want to take the dirty clothes home but what was the purpose in leaving them to dry? Were they hoping that when dry somebody would use them without realising? Or perhaps they just thought that such a wonderous thing as child sized denim would astound the locals and left them there for our ‘museum of the future’?

This brings me to rants of the week, the first is to the delightful grocery home delivery service. Part of my groceries last week was a bath mat set, you know the deal a bath mat and a toilet pedestal mat. When I unpacked I found just a bath mat, despite the packaging saying that it was ” two piece”. When I called the other side of the planet, hey why do it in England, they asked if I had received the item and I explained that I had received half of it. I will acknowledge that this was my mistake as the call centre apologised and said that they would refund half of the value. But I don’t have any need for half of a set I responded, indeed they were more than welcome to have the half back  but the problem was that technically I had received the item.

In the end my cell phone signal came to the rescue and dumped the call, when I called back,and regaled the new call centre person with my analogy regarding empty pots of jam having no value despite the pot technically being present, I was rewarded with a refund, in full no less.

The second rant is against UKIP, well actually all of the self-serving, leaching politicians and their street walking cronies. I have a postal vote, I exercised it on Saturday and the envelope which I carried, on that same day, to the post office was most obviously my vote. At this stage my selection is clearly complete so why on earth do you feel the need to assault me on the street? As a rational citizen of the country I have deliberated over the pool of hopeless, arrogant liars that I have to choose from and selected the one who makes my skin crawl the least. When you assault me in the street you change the leaderboard and make me want to remove my support from your particular cretin but the system does not allow me to.

If I open the envelope my vote spoils and my voice is not heard. I am under no illusion that my voice counts you understand but hell I have done my bit, I have selected my cretin so leave me alone. Take note of the comedy sized envelope labeled A or whatever it says and get the hell out of my way. Or perhaps I am misreading the whole scenario, I presumed that these people were simply ignoring the envelope but perhaps they were targeting me. Perhaps this was all some plan to spoil my vote? No, I think not, that would involve a level of intelligence way above that of a politician.

Diesel love and wet toes

Heading home yesterday evening I passed a friend who was heading in the opposite direction. What amused me about this encounter was that said friend looked slightly taken aback by seeing somebody he knew, his female companion did not seem so concerned. This morning I walked into the same friend travelling in the opposite direction, collar up, hat on and dark glasses. We exchanged the traditional “got to stop meeting like this” comment as you do and I continued on my way with a smile.

I’ve known this guy for years, he earns good money and is always happy. I don’t mean that he always smiles or that I only see him drunk I mean that he has a genuinely happy disposition. The thing is that he is also the guardian of a secret that society doesn’t want us to know, he is single. I often, very often, see him walking back past my place in the morning, the ‘walk of shame’ as it’s known. There is no shame of course, not from either party it’s all smiles.

All the stuff about needing somebody at home, companionship and the like is what people say to justify their position. The truth is that the least happy people I know are in relationships or the result of failed ones. I have a friend, a devout petrol head, who has brought a diesel car and he does the same; he is forever explaining how it “feels chipped” or is “just as fast”. The truth is that we don’t need a relationship to be happy but when we are in one we cover insecurity and unhappiness by telling the world how luck we are.

Sure people who are single occasionally wish they weren’t but people in relationships do it a lot more. If you add in the nightly manoeuvres of my pal I would suggest that the single people wouldn’t think about relationships ever after all has anybody ever actually loved a diesel?

In other news, after much deliberation, I have composed a long message and sent it to my estate agent of choice. There is nothing wrong with answering the questions that we produced over the weekend after all. I have no urgent need to pour hard earned money into a chance venue but equally I would be remiss not to evaluate options. There is no business urgency at the moment and there are still hurdles to overcome but it feels great to get a toe wet.

I also have an update on healing. They say that healing is all swings and roundabouts, you gain here and lose there. Some days you are in pain and some days not so much. At the moment, please don’t tell the phyiosterroist, it’s a pain phase. My wrists are doing their best to lock up in inappropriate positions and to wake me in the night. Shaking out the sleepy limbs produces a cacophony of sounds and resultant pain.

My shoulder has taken to slipping into whatever position it is that it doesn’t like when I am asleep and then punishing me for it when I awake. I get the feeling that Ms Nature is not a fan of the current exercise regime but frankly I don’t care. I have had positive feedback on the strength in my handshake and I am defeating jars with relative ease. These are tangible and physical results, real improvements in my life. On the flip side I struggle to lift a kettle without pain and tend to wince when putting a shirt on. If all that Ms Nature has is pain then she is on a hiding to nothing, note that I didn’t say I couldn’t tip a kettle just that it hurt.

Stupid or something to say?

What is it that causes our reporters to expand stories to such a level?

In this mornings headlines about HMV, the company has suspended its shares and called in the administrators and ‘jobs are at risk’ no shit Sherlock! I watched the article on troops being sent to some other arguing African state and fully expected them to ‘lives are at risk’ as we watched them load guns into trucks!

Is it a dumbing down or do these people get paid per word? Is it the same cause as the station announcers telling us that ‘platforms may be wet’ because of rain? I’m not against information being given but surely only when we need it? If it rains stuff gets wet, you don’t need to tell me but if you paint a white door frame white the ‘wet paint’ sign is a sensible precaution.

Is this Health and Safety at play? Or is it some equal opportunity thing where have to ensure that we address the half wits as well as the normal people? It strikes me that this is one of the reasons for over population, we are defeating natural selection if you don’t know that standing in the fast lane of the motorway is hazardous to your health then nature is trying to tell you something!

This seems to be a peculiarly British thing and I wonder if its because nature has been too kind to us, how would we cope with the venomous spiders of Australia for example? A sign attached to every spider web ‘caution may contain spiders’ or would we have to spray them all orange?

As a final example whilst the issue of nut allergy is a serious one why do we need to apply the ‘may contain nuts’ label to bags of nuts? Surely this is obvious? Why don’t we apply a label saying ‘does not contain penguins’? Allow me to suggest that ‘may contain nuts’ is a more appropriate label for the label makers, the health and safety and those bloody station announcers!