All the fun of the fair

Trade fairs - a chance for companies to meet new customers and a chance for customers to exchange their hard earned cash for large pieces of shiny stainless steel. I found this year’s Scot Hot exhibition in Glasgow much more use than last for the simple reason that, having been in the business for over 2 years I now have a good idea of what I need and more importantly what I don’t need. Two years ago I’d have gone “Ooooh that’s nice and shiny and has lots of controls on the front - I’ll have it” Now I’m more likely to ask “why should I buy this piece of kit when everyone in the trade says to buy second hand” I’ve got the names of some useful suppliers both of equipment and food and that should help when we finally take the plunge and start food in…

…May.

Let’s be more specific.

The 7th of May is the bank holiday. So we should start food that weekend. Probably on the Friday. Okay, we’ll start bar meals (and evening meals for residents) on Friday 4th May.

What you’ve just witnessed is a business decision being made. I hope it was as exciting for you as it was for us.

Musical chairs

I was going to refer to the Joyce Hatto scandal which is currently causing ructions in the usually sedate world of classical music, but it looks as though someone not unrelated to me has got there first!

Cookery, beer and carpets

Cookery

I’ve just finished the seventh week of my 12 week cookery course and this weekend I’ll be working in the kitchen of a bar/restaurant near Glasgow to get some practical experience of how a real kitchen, as opposed to a teaching one, operates. There are lots of things that chefs just do without thinking about and I need to know about them before we start meals.

Beer

Last week I asked my supplier for Krusovice dark lager and they sent the light stuff. This week saw the delivery of a case of what I actually wanted in the first place. Krusovice Czerny is an old style dark lager with an off dry malty taste, good hop balance and a strength of only 3.6%. Its paler cousin Krusovice Imperial, is a well balanced full flavoured lager with an abv of 5%. Both are on sale in the bar at £2.40.

Carpets

Continue to be fitted and the light fittings are back up in the function room. Some guests were waxing lyrical about our lighted mirrors in the ensuites and asking where we got them. They and all the lights in the public rooms came from lighting styles in Chelmsford. While I’m in a charitable mood I may as well mention other companies that we’ve had good service from. Clenaware is unlikely to mean anything to you unless you’re in the trade, but they make industrial dishwashers and their customer service is second to none. If we need any spare parts we just call and the part is there the following morning. That should be normal, but it isn’t.

Driven to distraction

The A68 runs from the outskirts of Edinburgh to Corbridge on Hadrians wall. It runs through some small villages such as Pathhead and some slightly larger towns such as Lauder and Earlston…

…and Jedburgh of course. One feature of the road is the abundance of speed cameras, no more than a mile or two apart in some places. They’re not there for decoration: the road has a very bad safety record which is partly due to the combination of long straights and unexpected bends. Then there’s the lack of places to pass which causes frustration and impatience. People take risks.

Which might go some way to explain why, driving home to the hotel last night, I rounded a bend after the Galashiels roundabout and found myself staring into a pair of headlights about 10 metres away. Someone had decided that this was an ideal place to overtake.

More by good luck than any skill or judgement on his part we avoided becoming road accident statistics. I hope it was all worth it to get home three seconds faster.

Events

Handba’ day today in Jed. The boards which are placed on the windows in the high street have until now been stored in the derelict barn at the back of the hotel. Now, they’ve found a new home and we have the barn back. It’s a good sized space, but the roof is falling in and it’s full of pigeons. We have plans for it for next year, but it’s not top priority.

Revovations

Progress:  the carpet fitters were in today. They were working in the dining room and the first floor bathroom. The painting in the function room is finished, so carpeting and dance floor can be fitted there too.

From darkness into light

The Krusovice lager I mentioned has arrived. Despite assurances by telesales that it was the dark variety, the contents of the bottles look suspiciously pale. Well, we’ll just have to get another crate, this time of the right thing.

A good night in the bar went some way to making up for the dismal week. A large, noisy but generally good humoured crowd having a good night out. Just what we needed.

Good news also on the renovations front. The function room repairs are all but complete. The painters reckon they’ll be finished tomorrow. The boarding in the pend is being replaced and we have nice new ceilings in the two cellars. Hopefully the carpet fitter will turn up next week as well.

I was planning to skip a day of my cookery course to go to Scot Hot, but it turns out that the cook school is taking the entire group there anyway. We need some equipment for the new kitchen, but the advice I’ve been given is to buy second hand. Commercial equipment is built extremely well and you’ll generally get it for half price or less.

Migration

Wow! Where am I? Last time I looked I was on Blogger and now…

Yes, the blog has migrated to wordpress and very nice it looks too. That picture on the front page isn’t Jedburgh by the way - it came with the template. I’ll change it just as soon as I’ve found a suitable replacement.

Yesterday was a new record for the public bar. Open from 4pm until 10pm. Takings: £0.00. The vast majority of the winter bar trade is on Saturday with modestly good takings on Fridays and Sundays. The rest of the week- forget it. When we took over, the public bar didn’t open at all Monday to Wednesday and it’s easy now to see why. In the summer things improve and the start of bar lunches in April will help. Last time I was in Glasgow the bar I was in was mobbed. It looked like Saturday night at the Spread. It was a Monday.

In that bar they were selling delicious Krusovice dark lager which was £3.50 a bottle. We’ve just got some at the Spread and you can bet it won’t be anywhere near that price. Here’s an idea. Why don’t all you folks in Glasgow and Edinburgh come down to our bar for an evening. With savings of around £1 per pint, you could easily charter a bus and still have more money at the end of the night. Deal? Good. See you next Tuesday.

The fax of life

Our fax machine is old and tired, so I’ve spent the past couple of days setting up a fax server on the computer. Partial success so far - it sends (as long as the file is of a particular type) and doesn’t receive at all. So that’s something to keep me occupied in all this free time I have:-(

Painters were here today and they have finished stripping the flood damaged back wall of the function room. One of the cellars underneath appears to have been plastered - the other one hasn’t been yet.

The coke machine has been fixed (new fan) and I need a new part for the dishwasher. Not the same one as last time, but with the same general result (detergent all over the floor). The part will be with us tomorrow by which time I’ll be safely up in Edinburgh again.

Bookings continue to arrive with several bookings for parties of golfers coming in. Someone’s doing something right and for once it looks as though it might be us. Last night’s laterooms debacle turns out not to have been their fault… or ours. Work that out if you will.

Very early rooms

We took a booking yesterday via our internet selling agents laterooms. The booking was for the 11th of March.

The guests turned up this afternoon.

Go figure (as my US friend Frankie would say)

Meanwhile all the mechanical devices in the hotel are conspiring against us. The coke machine has gone up in smoke again, the dishwasher is squirting detergent all over the floor again and the smaller washing machine is making ominous grinding noises,

Still, the Welsh rugby fans were mightily impressed with the renovated hotel. Some of them have been coming here for 30 years and knew the place when it was not at its best. We look forward to seeing them again in two years time.

An area the size of Wales…

Every two years lots of Welsh people come here to watch the Scotland v Wales game. Some go to Edinburgh to be there in person and the rest watch it on tv. The group we have this weekend last stayed here 6 years ago and seem to be pleasantly surprised by the improvements.

Meanwhile we took a booking for May tonight thanks to a recommendation from someone called Julie who works at the antique shop further down the High Street. Julie, I’m sorry to say that I haven’t the faintest idea who you are, but thanks for the recommendation anyway.

We’ve also taken a booking for a golf party in September. Despite all the rude things we say about them it seems that visitscotland has its uses.

Snow in Jed today, but nothing like the quantity they’ve had in England. Or Wales.

Hair raising driving!

Here’s someone you don’t want to run into, although he’s more likely to run into you…