A most unlikely landlord Chapter 1 – The beginning Chapter 2- The male takes an idea and runs with it Chapter 3 – The search is on Chapter 4 – The breakthrough Chapter 5 – Paradise found Chapter 6 – Perfection Chapter 7 – The raw truth Chapter 8 – Finding the wonga Chapter 9 – Next- will they or won’t they sell Chapter 10 – On the right track Chapter 11 – Sods law prevails Chapter 12 – The offer Chapter 13 – A government of idiots Chapter 14 – Stamp duty Chapter 15 – The long wait Chapter 16 – A short break Chapter 17 – The big Move Chapter 18 – My first big problem# Chapter 19 – Time to get serious Chapter 20 – The new floor Chapter 21 – Time for a rant Chapter 22 – A customer to remember Chapter 23 – The return of sods law Chapter 24 - Our first fight Chapter 25 – Environmental health Chapter 26 – No smoking Chapter 27 – A falling out Chapter 28 – Grass and more grass Chapter 29 – Fire bugs Chapter 30 – Mr Tom Chapter 31 – History of the Wharf Chapter 32 – Out first chef Chapter 33 – The function room Chapter 34 – Manni Chapter 35 – Where have all the glasses gone Chapter 36 – Fireman Sam Chapter 37 – You don’t want to do it like that Chapter 38 – Boundary wars Chapter 39 – Goodbye Merc Chapter 40 – Mr Imran Khan Chapter 41 – Search for a boat Chapter 42 – The great flood Chapter 43 – Calendar boys Chapter 44 – The man cave Chapter 45 – Going underground Chapter 46 – Water world
Chapter 47 – The big clean up Chapter 48 – The insurance company Chapter 49 - Another victim of the flood Chapter 50 – Pod issues Chapter 51 – Flood update Chapter 52 – The great wall of …. Worcester Chapter 53 – The holiday home Chapter 54 – Pub for sale Chapter 55 – Once in a lifetime Chapter 56– My Dad Chapter 57 – What do they do at home? Chapter 58 – Anyone seen my keys? Chapter 59 – We have a buyer Chapter 60 – The bottom dropped out of my world Chapter 61 - You couldn’t make it up Chapter 62 – 12 months later Chapter 63 – My new workshop Chapter 64 – Goodbye Chapter 65 – Hurricane Irma Chapter 66 – A new beginning A most unlikely landlord The story of The Wharf so far, by Mark & Kelly Chapter 1 – The beginning
Commercial cater equipment costs an absolute fortune. I remember that during the very first week after we bought the pub the glass washing machine started to play up. Now I was always under the impression that the glasses were cleaned by turning them upside down in a bowl of water that had an upturned revolving rubber stump with tentacles on it. Apparently that form of glass cleaning is no longer allowed. The glasses must now be cleaned in a machine that is basically a dish washer but with a much faster cycle. A two minute cycle. Which when you think about it makes sense. It wouldn’t be much use to you having to wait the 45 minutes or so that a normal dishwasher would take to complete a cycle. Anyway, the machine that was giving us trouble was a stainless steel contraction about the size of a normal dishwasher and without it functioning we would have to close the pub. So, a quick call home, as Kelly was now installed in the pub yet, had Kelly tracking down a new machine. She rang back to say that there was one waiting for me at a commercial supplier in nearby Redditch, all paid for and ready for collection. Great, off I went. On arrival I walked into the delivery point and was spotted straight away as the person coming to collect a glass washer. “There it is” said the helpful guy pointing towards the floor, with the paperwork just needing a signature I would be loaded and away in minutes. But for the life of me I couldn’t see a machine big enough that resembled the broken piece of crap that I had left behind at the pub. He pointed again after noticing my confused expression. Nothing registered. When he eventually pointed specifically to a small eighteen inch square box on the floor. I knew that somewhere between me, Kelly and the supplier there had been a communicative cock-up! I needed a glass washer that was about the size of a normal domestic washing machine and here he was trying to palm me off with some toy replica. As it turned out, this was the right machine for the job. It was not much bigger than a microwave oven and would take 16 glasses at a time, wash and rinse them inside of two minutes. If that was impressive so was the price. ALMOST £ 800!
host of other stuff that would bore the pants off you ( You may lose your pants now but at least you won’t burn to death !). I don’t have a problem when it comes to conforming to safety criteria, it’s there for a reason. But when someone is asking for help to make sure that their customers can enjoy a drink in a safe environment and the fire service is unable or unwilling or too skint to provide any kind of service that could potentially pre-empt a catastrophe, you have to ask yourself one question. Just what value do the bean counters put on a human life? Chapter 37 – You don’t want to do it like that In any industry you will always find the expert. The guy who’s done it all, been everywhere, seen everything and got all the T shirts. His is bigger, better, longer, (of course!) Faster, cuter, cheaper and I think you get the picture. Whatever you’ve bought, seen, done, thought of or imagined he’s already one step ahead of you with an ‘er’ on the end ! These ‘experts’ are sometimes amusing to listen to but in the end you just get bored with their version of ‘one-up-man ship’. Sometimes it’s difficult to sort out the wheat from the chaff. The guys who are making it up from the real macoys’ who know what they’re talking about. Personally, if I know what I’m talking about then I tend not to be shy about sharing my opinions with anyone who’ll listen. However if I’m a little light on the knowledge side of a particular subject then I tend to back off and listen to what others say, I’ve found that I can learn more that way without winging it and coming across as a pillock who doesn’t know his arse from his elbow. What annoys me more than anything else though are the ‘experts’ who refuse point blank to take advice from the experts. You know