to see the wizard, the wonderful wizard of pub.
After lots of months, more bureaucratic idiocy than you can shake Michael Gove at and two weeks of stress, distress and uncertainty which I hope never to have to repeat, John Q. has bought a pub and is loading the van tomorrow. Then I’m going out.
I may be some time.
NB: a couple of articles are pre-loaded but I may not get back to deal with comments for a while.
So, there’s reasons why I haven’t talked any more about the process of buying a new pub. There are some things I am aching to say, and once I have signatures in the right places I’m going to have my self some fun saying them, but for the moment circumspection is still the order of the day.
I’m still buying a pub, it’s now near the south coast. It’s nicer, older, in a better location for passing and tourist trade, vastly better equipped in terms of cellar space and it has a back room I can use to start a brewery. The residential area could have been tailored to my team, and I am going to be very happy once I’m selling ales.
The best I can do on detail is that I’ll be within the catchment to use Dark Star as my regular brewer; I shall be making a feature of British-brewed, craft lagers, and we will be making a feature of a locally-sourced, seasonal food offering. I’m working my ass off, and something interesting is happening in politics, so my opportunities to blog are limited but from after tomorrow I’m no longer running the Pembury Tavern, so there should be some at least. Evening all.
I have been known to be mean about Iain Dale. Not today. Iain’s response to the negative turn in the Labservative campaign is principled, well-explained and (frankly) basic decency. It is a shame the Cameroons are not as honourable as Mr. Dale.
In other news, many things have been happening to me lately. I’m still buying a pub, it’s not the one I was originally trying to buy, it’s happening on a very compressed timescale and I haven’t had any time to write about it, let alone about why I agree with Nick. This is why I’ve only just noticed the two comments that went unapproved for a while, sorry guys.
I will shortly be able to post about the rapid and occasionally extremely annoying changes in the pub plan, and get some politics written, because tomorrow is my last day managing the Pembury; thus, by Sunday I should have woken up and will have a little time to write in.
Still waiting to hear anything useful. Will update when we do. Currently trying not to let the illegitimi carborund me.
This is an odd process. We’ve got to the point where we’re frantically posting forms about collecting signatures and credit notes and so on, but nothing useful has happened lately for me to write about. Also, my pub is busy, and I’m pressed for time. More anon.
I don’t often use the Context filter on this blog (hur hur). This isn’t a personality project, it’s a philosophical one; and while my personality interacts with my thinking, I don’t tend to talk about my recent bus traumas and how my pets are doing here. There are other places for that. However, I have the filter because sometimes things that happen will directly affect both how I think, and how often I get the chance.
So, just after the house-move one of my full-time staff broke her leg, and is out for 6-12 weeks. So I’ve just done two weeks of most of her work as well as mine… and I’ve really had no reading time. Add to this a continuing state of internet fail at home, for reasons of BT, and I’m still on hiatus. Sorry…
In other news, really everyone needs to read this.
JQP has fallen down the hole marked “House-move” and will climb out eventually.
Jennie Rigg made a recent post which got me thinking about the blog-roll on here. I composed it in two, short, bursts of organisation, where I dumped the contents of my blog aggregator into links dialogues. Wasn’t really thought about; it was just ‘list o’stuff wot I read’ and ‘list o’stuff about beer wot I read’. The outcome was this:
I’m off to help build artistic installations in a field in a week; and between illness, work at the pub and work on that my ability to keep up with my reading and thinking has been seriously compromised. If I get a chance I’ll post at least once before I go but if I don’t, I’ll next be seen circa 3rd or 4th July.
I was just getting things back in gear when I was sunk by a passing fever. I’m now (shakily!) back at work and eating my way out through 100+ blog posts and a further 150+ trad!media articles. Back when capable.
These guys deserve to be high-lighted. I’m interested in what they want to do; we’ve seen that this kind of project can succeed, but we’ve also all seen them fail. Don’t hold their domain name against them; the name-space is pretty polluted these days.
Dropping off-line altogether for four days has left me very seriously short on my reading and thinking. Bank-holiday weekends put on a lot of pressure at work even when I haven’t been away from my post for half of a week right before; so I’m not going to get it together enough to post ’til I’ve caught up on some sleep. Back as soon as I’ve something to say.
JQP will undergo a brief hiatus as I’m away from the keyboard doing some Ack-Ting. I leave you with Andy May’s summary of the downfall of Speaker Martin.
 | JQP Live! |
The view across the bar. 