An Ode to The North

I was asked to rant. Well, this is gonna be easy...Everywhere is fucking shut and the Spirited Awards have just come out. 

Congratulations to all of the same people and the same bars that get nominated every single year. Yawn. It’s just becoming more and more ridiculous. I’m pretty sure that most of us could easily name the top ten with reasonable accuracy every single year. I don’t see the point. Plus, the categories are stupid - surely high volume isn’t about how loud your place is? It can’t be, right? But I’ve been to those places and they aren’t exactly ten deep every night with people dancing on tables. I’ve been to bars that are so busy that I clapped the bartenders at 8pm every Thursday for how hard they were working. These bars will never be nominated at Tales. That’s probably a good thing though. I’m pretty sure there’s a bar nominated this year that’s only just opened, so there’s not a chance in hell that anyone could have been there to “judge” it. These awards are more and more about who’s on Facebook most often, rather than who’s actually dead fucking busy or what bar is actually the best. They’re so annoying. Yeah I’m annoyed we barely get nominated up North. I get it though, I really do. People get stuck in London. It’s dead shit to get around. It takes like an hour to get from one award winning bar to another, that probably aren’t even ten miles from each other. So it must take something like four days to get to Manchester right? Nope. It’s just over two hours. Anyway, bollocks to all these awards. Remember when CLASS revealed who had won a day before the awards? That was funny. 

Coronavirus is wank. 

I’m hoping there’s some good to come out of all this. It’s not gonna be the twenty thousand videos that loads of bartenders keep putting up of themselves making drinks or them getting pissed in front of their laptops with other people getting drunk in front of their laptops. I find that really fucking weird. Although I am really old. 

Maybe this is the future? If it is, fuck that. 

So what’s gonna happen when we can reopen? Are the general public going to just stay at home anyway? They can all make good drinks now remember as there’s a million fucking videos posted online for them. Have they gotten used to all of this?  If they have, I’ve got a feeling we’ll be entering a new age where we’re open but we’re pretty much only serving bartenders on their nights off. I like the sound of that to be honest although it’s not exactly sustainable. 

Nah, I think we’re gonna come through all of this ok. We’re sadly going to lose a few places which is really shit, and some people too which is absolutely heartbreaking. But the industry will survive and people are going to wash their hands a lot more and not talk 10cm away from your face and not awkwardly hug you when you see them. I’ll take that. 

I really do hope everyone is ok and everyone comes through the other side relatively unscathed. 

Rant over.