Find a penny, pick it up..

Today I feel good. Despite the fact that I was out drinking again and actually feel like shit this afternoon. I woke at half one, having not been able to sleep until five, last night. I wasn't even any drunker than usual, but had been smoking, which is the stupidest thing that I ever do in my life. Even though I feel wretched and sick and everything, I feel really positive about things today for two reasons. Firstly the lease for the pub arrived in the post for me to sign today. This is exciting for me as you can imagine. I just have to sign it and drop off a huge amount of money, and the place shall be mine within days. 

Secondly; well I'm not a superstitious person, but I do tend to pick up pennies when I find them. In my mind I usually tend to go through the mantra that we all learnt of discovered pennies as little children. Most of the time I pick the coin up and perform the ritual, and forget about the penny later that day. Perhaps this is why I don't ever seem to have any money.  This time I found a dirty, discoloured coin sitting on the wall of our garden, near the rocks and neighbours' hedge. I picked it up, thanked my luck, and began to clean off the mud and dirt on the coin. As chance would have it this was not a lucky penny, but a lucky sixpence from 1950.  It must have been buried in our garden for a long  time, and had only emerged very recently, to enhance the luck of a certain young publican. It just seems very apt timing to find it on the very day that the contract for my future also came along. I'm going to keep this coin, and hopefully I shall not need to use all of it's luck up too soon. 

:) 

My Records.

Somebody yesterday asked me to elaborate on my record collection, which I shall do. It's big, heavy, takes up a lot of room, and is almost without exception worth less now than what I paid for it. Over the years I have acquired a lot of records from local charity shops, and various assorted means, for usually not a lot of money. A few years ago I did have a phase of buying new records from Ebay, Fopp and Rise, but more often than not I have paid less than a few pounds for my records. While this is a good thing when I get very lucky in the case of At Folsom Prison, in other cases it may not have produced such dividends. I have had eBay accounts but usually get thrown off for forgetting to pay for a week or so, and everybody is so impatient these days. In fact one time an Ebayer had actually sent the record to me, and given me positive feedback before I had paid, which was interesting. I did of course pay him in the end. I hope. Anyhow without resorting to the word eclectic, I'm not really certain how to adequately describe my ever-expanding collection without actually listing every record that I own.

 Well, last night were playing some  board games, and this is a list of singles and albums that were played over the evening; Stone roses - Something's Burning, Tubeway Army - Are Friends Electric, Barry McGuire - Eve of Destruction, Edwin Starr - Ooo Baby Baby, Donna Summer -  I Feel Love, Jan Hammer - Miama Vice Theme Tune, Squeeze - Cool for Cats, Dusty - Baby You Don't Know, The Train Spotters (punk band), ? and the Mysterians - 96 Tears, Elvis Costello - Watching The Detectives, Michael Jackson - Billie Jean, Jonathon Richman - Astral Plane, The Gap Band - Oops Up Side Your Head, Giorgio Moroder - Together in Electric Dreams, Gladys Knight - To Make a Long Story Short, along with some Billie Holiday, Sonic Youth and Elliot Smith, Beatles and the Jungle Book Soundtrack on long players.

I would say that this was kind of representative of the music that I play, but of course there are some thing missing. I Tend to play quite a lot of old Blues records, such as Big Bill Broonzy and Bessie Smith, along with Nick Drake, Johnny Cash and the Velvet Underground.

Probably my favourite three albums currently are all by Canadians actually. Leonard Cohen, Joni Mitchell and Neil Young. There are many things that I love to listen to which are probably not really pub-friendly music, such as say the White Stripes, Captain Beefheart or Sonic Youth, but I would say the majority of it goes down pretty well at the correct time. I'm going to put up a music page here, detailing our favourites, the kind of things that we are listening to at the minute, and maybe listing new acquisitions.

And about the post photograph which I am quite happy with. It was taken on a Nikon D200, 1/20th, ISO1600, 50ml lens at f1.8, using a monopod. The deck is providing the only light source. It is Gladys Knight playing on the deck, and I have a feeling that for the image I may have had to cheat and slow the speed down to 33rpm in order to allow the flicky-red-light-texture- to become more pronounced. The cartridge is just a cheap Stanton, but it does produce a satisfying shadow, I hope you agree. 

Right then, it's beginning to sink in now that this is going to happen. I had a bill in the post today for over two grand, legals and taxes. And that is far from all the legals and such that I shall have to pay. I definitely need to start getting my act together. No more staying in bed 'til noon, then ambling along at a snails pace. I have done a mental assess of what I actually have, and it brought it home to me that I need to do this right, because I don't really have a lot to fall back onto. My mental stocktake revealed to me that I have a strong idea of what the best pubs in the world should be like, a large amount of junk in my house with which I am going to fit out this pub, a surprisingly small sum of money in my bank account in which to buy stock and all else that we shall need, and hopefully the experience, energy, knowledge and vision to turn an empty building into something quite special.

Time to put my running shoes on and get into those starter blocks.

Speaking of piles of junk, here is one of mine. This is a pile of picture frames that I have  collected mostly from charity shops over the last six months or so. The picture at the front gives a good clue to one of the themes that I intend to follow re- decorations. 

More stuff.

Finally the sun has emerged long enough for me to take a properer photograph of my new bike. Here she is taking in the sun outside our house in Cotham. Research tells me that it is a Raleigh RSW 16. They were Raleigh’s answer to the Moulton range of cycles which were first released in 1962. My bike has 68 stamped on the Sturmy Archer rear hub, which suggests it is a 1968 model, just after Raleigh bought out the Moulton company outright. The rear tyre seems to be an original, which makes it possibly forty three years old. As I am such a shameless self publicist, I am thinking of using this vintage machine to advertise the pub venture, namely getting ,’The Bag of Nails’ painted onto both sides of the frame. The frame has already been badly painted once, so I would not be ruining anything original. This might well help advertise the pub, because I do already get a lot of looks as I cycle around the city. Sacrilege, shameless opportunism, or just the sign of an inflated ego? You tell me. Do please comment and let me know your thoughts.  

On Saturday evening, I briefly went to Glostonbury. This is the wittily named annual festival of the Golden Lion pub, on Gloucester road. You can see what they did there. It’s a great pub actually and one that I ought to visit much more. The range of ales is limited but fine, with Gem and Butcombe Gold always available, but this pub promotes itself as more of a music pub. This is not that surprising as the same bloke who has this pub also has the famous Old Duke on Kings Street, named after Duke Ellington, I believe. Anyhow you can see how busy the Lion was on Saturday evening. While we were there, they were playing what I would call electro-dub very loudly, shaking out the neighbourhood. Incidentally, the building to the right in the picture is Horfield Nick, which is where Paul Gadd served his all too short sentence for being a dirty, dirty bastard. It must be mental torture for some of the inmates, being able to hear banging music and the sounds of people getting pissed at times. But at least they don't have to share their cells with pervy Gary Glitter any more. 

Later in the evening, I visited various excellent pubs in the centre of the town, and at the end we arrived at The Bridge, ran by my friends Greg and Simon. A tiny pub that used to be within the estate of Bath Ales, it also has a record player and shelves full of LP’s and singles. Anyhow, it seems that they are trimming their collection down, and had a few Ikea bags of records they were giving away. Good for me because I have a psychotic need to take home and play records. I took home around ten 12”’s including this fine Jansch / Renbourne / sampler and thirty odd assorted singles. Some of the singles are excellent an I’m looking forward to drunkenly playing them too loudly in the pub, after hours. Anyhow Phoebe is guarding the records in our porch as you can see here.  

Pictures and Music

As I expected I was not exceptionally good, playing music at the Hilly the other day, for a variety of unnamed reasons. I did stick to weak beer for most of the night in an attempt to stay sober, but it’s didn’t really work. The beer that I was drinking was Dawkins Milkmaid Mild coming in at only 2.8% abv. The Milkmaid Mild is surprisingly tasty for such a low alcohol content, with a creamy and malty taste. For me it has a warm, subtle bitterness that makes it very drinkable. After I finished playing music I moved onto something stronger which was a Bad Idea. I can’t remember what I drank after and I stayed for far too long. Yesterday was a write off. I can’t afford to do this kind of thing in the mid-week for a while at least.

The Bag of Nails is going to be a pub that reflects my character, and thus I am going to put a lot of myself into it. One of the most important things in my life is music, and I mostly choose to play music using tiny diamonds and little discs of vinyl. This photo shows the Technics 1210 deck that we shall be installing into the Bag somewhere. This is the same record player that I had famously put into the ‘Nubia and delighted so many customers during my tenure. It’s slightly knackered, but still keeps a good speed, and the sound will only cut away if you move the deck around too much. Initially it might have to sit on the end of the bar in the Bag until we find a permanent site. The thing that people loved at the last pub we ran, was the ability to pick and choose the next record, and the tangibility of handling and changing the records. The extra sound quality is a bonus of course. Unlike the ‘Nubes, there isn’t that much storage space downstairs there, so I may not be able to have all of my records available to play at once. I might have to employ a rotation scheme. I have been buying a lot more singles this last year and now am beginning to have a respectable collection. As long as you like old pop music that is, as most of the singles I find come from charity shops.

I have pictured another acquisition, which is an antique painting with a lovely gilt frame. The painting is around a hundred years old and by a Scottish artist called Sam Pope Jnr, 1881–1940. The painitng is quite nice, but it is the frame that I am actually interested in. I am happy that I only paid twenty five pounds, as the lady initially wanted ninety five for it, not long ago. I have been collecting these style of frames for a while and now I might just have enough. I will reveal what pictures I intend to put into them later. I do intend to make the walls of the pub very interesting to gaze upon. The two singles alongside the frame are Beats International, which was not as good as I had remembered it to be, and a Sam Cook classic, Wonderful World.

The weather was disgusting again today and I think our media ought to focus on the important aspects of our society. Not about newspapers shutting down, but why has the weather been so much less pleasant since the Tories got into power ? It cannot be just me that has noticed the link. How did they manage it ?

getting the ball rolling.

I now have a till. I am more excited by this then I expect anybody else to be, but it underlines to me that this is actually going to start happening. We have been waiting so long to iron out difficulties with the contract that it feels a relief to begin the ball rolling. We have not signed yet, but I expect to do this next week sometime. There do not seem to be any more hurdles to the deal.

I took the Raleigh shopping today. She cycles like a dream. As long as your dream is of teeny tiny wheels and fat, low pressure tyres. The riding position is difficult to describe. It is a little similar to sitting on a bar stool, holding onto a glass on the bar, but moving along on scooter wheels. I did enjoy pootling along the promenade of Gloucester Road, past the cafes and bars. And yet we did get quite a few looks, although the bicycle many more than myself. I popped into Fred Baker’s, which was the unfortunate bike shop that is next to the Tesco store that hit all of the headlines in May this year. Old Fred himself came out and uncharacteristically was quite disparaging about my lovely machine, but I think he was just winding me up. He did give me some tips about attempting to take this bike up the hill to Clifton, but frankly it is the return journey that worries me the most. One of my earliest grown-up emotions was dislike for caliper brakes. I will take a nice photo of my bike tomorrow if the sun emerges.

On the way home, I went into the second hand store near my house and made two excellent purchases. The Casio till and an old looking chair for the pub. It shall have to be upholstered, but I think that it looks really nice. The till works, but has no manual. It tallies up fine and ‘fingers crossed’ it will be able to perform accurate X and Z readings. I’m hoping to be able to use it until we need something more versatile. It has Larry Nash's service sticker on already, which is handy as I have used him before.

I’m going to the Hillgrove tonight to play some records. I’m a rubbish dj so I hope it goes well. It’s a horrible cliché but the word eclectic ought to be sewn onto my dj hat. It’s the only way that I can play records. (Those are singles in the photo. The 28mm lens makes them appear a bit larger than they actually are.)

Beginning.

My friend, Chris is great. This evening he gave to me this excellent Raleigh bike. It is from the sixties or seventies, and it is his belated birthday present to me. I am really chuffed that Chris had managed to acquire the beauty from his housemate. It has been gathering dust in Chris’s small lounge, and every time I visited them, I always cast longing eyes onto it. Now that it is mine I am a very happy monkey. It needs a little work, but I rode it home from his with no problems except for the embarrassment that juddery and extremely squeaky brake pads will make. I did manage to slightly scare an elderly couple while shamefully cycling on the pavement actually very slowly behind them. Sorry.

So this is my new blog. It’s the first time that I have been tempted to actually attempt to bore the entire planet with many details of my daily life. I am promising to myself to try not to start posting every mundane event that occurs every two hours in my life.

The reason why I am starting a journal is because very soon I hope to agree a contract for a lengthy lease of a local, respected pub that has been vacant for 12 months. We need to spend a little time decorating and possibly converting sections of the building, and basically turning it into a working pub once again, starting mostly from scratch. There are no fixtures and fittings within the building to speak of and I do not have loads of money to spend, so this could make the next few months are of our lives interesting. Getting to this stage has been a long and at times arduous mission, but it does finally look like it shall happen. I am going to share and convey the experiences that my partner, H and myself are going to experience, and hopefully some people might find it interesting enough to follow.

The reason that I feel compelled to start the diary today rather than any other day is that I feel the great pub adventure has genuinely begun today with the acquirement of the bicycle. I want it to be a kind of pub bicycle. I can use it to initially commute, to advertise my venture, and to visit any suppliers that are not in Clifton or Totterdown