This blog's been shit recently, hasn't it?
I can't deny the obvious. Is it because I've lost interest? Well, not quite. There's loads I'd like to write about. I just don't have the time. It's not like every minute of every day's bound up in running this pub, because it isn't. No, it's just that I value my spare time, and when I have less of it the internet's the last place I want to be. I hate computers. (Well, that's not true, I loved my Commodore 64 and my Amiga 500).
What's apparent to me is that I've built up something pretty good here. I don't want to throw that away. On the whole this blog has a good following, and it's launched me into a new, more fulfilling career. My life has changed immeasurably since the beginning of 2007, when I started writing here to stave off the office blues. You, as readers, have all helped to motivate me as I've sought a new and more fulfilling life. Thanks for that. Being a leveraged finance lawyer never was my bag, you see. Being a publican suits me much better. As old friends remind me, I've always wanted a pub. And now I've got one. And it's great.
This evening, I sat at my bar after a swift, breakneck run around Holborn, Covent Garden, Soho, Fitzrovia and Bloomsbury. Endorphins dance a merry jig, Tim Taylor Landlord meets my lips, and a gorgeous steak dinner sits in front of me. John O's entertaining the customers as one of our new recruits - a firecracker personality - backs him up. A couple of O.E. barristers who went to my college rock up for a nosey (a familiar situation). And I look around, and I'm proud of the place.
In the back room, the Magpies - the London branch of the Newcastle United Supporters Club - are having their monthly committee meeting. The Gunmakers was their home in the 70s and 80s, before idiots tried to turn it into a restaurant. Happily, they've got wind that the place is a pub again, and they've become regulars once more. All I need to do is put in a darts board, and they'll be in heaven, they say. Not likely, I reply.
The photo was taken on Sunday (on my mobby, naturally) from Holborn viaduct, which passes over Farringon Street and the subterranean course of the River Fleet.
20 comments:
It's funny how one morphs and kinda switches gears a bit. I think you've done a rather good job of taking this thing to a new level. Most beer blogs are pretty damn boring. Although I must admit there are some I enjoy. In saying that, Hess and his northern crew need constant surveillance.
The days of your blog being the most useful for London are gone - but for describing the ups and downs of running one of them it's interesting - and amusing.
London Skittles!
I had a similar " moment " to yours a few years back when I owned a pub here in Ireland.
It was about three in the morning and there was just the wife and me sat at the bar having a drink and looking at a till full of cash after a jammed Saturday night.
We later worked out we'd just conceived our second child on top of the pool table in the back bar.
No wonder I felt on top of the world - and I don't think it was the endorphins.
Wahaay !
What is LONDON skittles? Is it any different from Yorkshire Skittles, or have the Southerners merely pinched our game?
Sorry, I hadn't noticed that it was Stonch Sr. who had asked about the skittles. Here is a demonstration:
http://beerblog.genx40.com/archive/2007/august/pgp20videosof
I knew there was a hidden desire for London Skittles out there. I think the sausaged one has it right - you have transformed the blog marvelously. And there is nothing wrong with the "too busy to beer blog" when you are busy getting on with the beery trade. Even the gaps become beer related.
BTW, in Canada kids play "street hockey" among other forms of the game so you may want to consider "road skittles" as a better pastime than darts. There is a good chapter in Jackson's "The English Pub" on games and you can also find critical information in Timothy Finn's 1970s "Pub Games of England". I will prove a 20% subsidy on any honest efforts to introduce the full scale game of Knur and Spell into the urban landscape.
I don't think it's gone shit. Less frequent is not the same as shit.
Do you have the pub open all summer??
I'm not really a fan of any games in a pub - especially darts and one-arm bandits.
My local, which like most Irish pubs doesn't do food has no television, games machines or a dartboard just an ipod playing a permanent and quiet soundtrack of Americana and classic British rock from the 80's and 90's.
Sometimes I just stand there and listen to the hubbub of pleasant conversation interspersed with the occasional outbreak of laughter.It's a great sound,people talking.
Barm is quite right on this Jeff. Defiantly not shit, perhaps just a little constipated.
I like a good shuffleboard table in a bar (I'm trying to stop saying "pub" when referring to American establishments). It's non-electric, relatively quiet -- I find the click and thump of the pucks soothing -- and rewards skill and practice...and you can most definitely do well while drinking. I like cards, too, but all anyone wants to play is that damnable Texas Hold 'Em. As if I'd want anyone from to Texas to "hold 'em." I'll hold them myself, if it comes to that.
Yep - and it's been ever since you changed the name
THE VAUX
I wouldn't know , haven't been reading it, Hang on , D'OH. Anyway they say Beerty is in the eye of the beer Holder, and you do not hold so many in other pubs these days as you are working to hard, and if you did you would be a raging alcolholic by now.
Carefree
It was better when the name of your pub was not shown in this blog. Now it seems that the blog is just a plug for the pub.
Bring back Stonch's Beer Blog!
More Doc Gibbles adventures might liven things up...
Don't be a chippy twat, Ian. Of course the blog's going to feature the pub a lot. It's entirely relevant and it's where I spend most of my time and energy in any case.
Well Said Jeffrey
That shot is brilliant!
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