Part 65 Blinded By The Light

Table legs, kitchen utensils and air conditioning.

Did you know, if you put a Like at the end of this, slow people will never walk in front of you ever again.

Well hello to you. Right, we’re off.

If you remember correctly, last week we told you that the great guy, Billy The Builder, had doubled his price.

Now, there are many sentences we could have put together in response to Billy.

“Be off with you Billy, you vagrant.”

“Well, we’re not paying that Billy, you’re a bit naughty.”

“We’ll get someone else in, you cheeky scoundrel.”

But lets be honest, because Billy The Builder was almost a friend, we had nothing in writing, we had no actual proof of the agreed price. So we had no real argument. We never made that mistake again.

And also, Billy was about three quarters of the way through the job, to find someone else who could finish the work could take months, and we needed to open the restaurant.

Hey, maybe Billy boy knew this. Of course he did.

Anyway, when Billy The Builder finished, we paid him the fifteen grand, and then we agreed, verbally, to pay him the rest, as and when we could. Billy was expecting to get the rest in a few months. But because Billy didn't get that part in writing, we paid it in little chunks, which took a year and a half. Sorry Billy.

Now a little positivity, Billy The Builder did a very good job. Him and his team ripped out the bar, and boarded over the back bar. That was a good idea, he literally left the shelves and racks in place and put a wall over the back of the bar. We lost a little space but it was nothing compared to the size of the restaurant.

The raised area towards the back, where the Samurai warrior stood, now had a little wall to make that area feel private.

There were two dumb waiters, little lifts which bring plates from the kitchen. We decided that one would be for food only and the other would take dirty crockery and cutlery down to the kitchen. But we didn’t like the idea of diners seeing these lifts, nothing wrong with them, they're very common, but when you’re looking at buying a new Porsche, do you really want to look at the oil pump. So Billy built some screens across these.

There was more, but basically, Billy did actually leave the place looking smart.

Now it was our turn, we had a blank canvas to work with.

We hung pictures and vintage clipped edge mirrors around the restaurant walls. This was supposed to take half a day, it took two and a half days.

We cleaned the kitchen from the very top to the very bottom. This was supposed to take two days. It took a week.

The crockery and cutlery arrived, it needed unpacking and cleaning. That took a day.

Luckily, Lozza (you remember, she was the chief from York who was coming to London to work with us) very kindly helped us. And we certainly needed help.

We desperately needed to open so that we could trade and start taking some money. But we couldn't open until everything was in place.

The tables and chairs arrived. However, we didn't realise that the table legs and tops were separate and needed screwing together. We calculated that there were one hundred and forty four holes which needed drilling and the same amount of screws which needed turning into those holes. Another day gone.

And every table, chair and table leg was wrapped in a plastic sheet. When we finished putting them in place, the pile of plastic which had built up in the corner was higher than us. But it was OK because back then we could just throw it in the ocean*.

To be honest, this isn’t a photo from the originalist up, but you get the idea.

Glasses needed washing, polishing and putting somewhere.

Three hundred and forty seven kitchen utensils needed somewhere to live in the kitchen.

And other tasks which were so small, yet so big, they devoured time.

On the fascia at the front of the restaurant there was a hole about the size of a football, it was where the old restaurant sign had been. It needed covering, but where do you buy a piece of metal from in central London?

Ah, my dad was a sheet metal worker, I was never sure what that meant but the word metal was in the title.

“Hiya Dad, I need a piece of metal to cover a whole up.”

“Aye alright, what size?”

“Errr, sixty centimetres by forty centimetres. Is that too big for you to sort?”

“Nah, that’s nowt. Will it be sticking to another piece of metal?”

“Yes it will be.”

“Alright, I’ll get the adhesive as well.”

So the next time we were back up north, about five hours drive away, we picked up the sheet of aluminium. And then a couple of days later, when we had loaded the car up with more equipment from our house, we were back in the restaurant and we glued the metal sheet over the hole. Then painted it.

That one simple operation took so much effort, and time.

There were many many times when we wished we had rich parents who had bought us a restaurant which we would run, just to fill in our spare time, just for fun.

There was way too much to do. It was me and Donna, with some help from Lozza, and that wasn’t enough. But who else could help, we knew nobody in London.

So we cracked on.

But you know what, you know when times are hard, when you feel as if you’re pushing water up a hill, you’re plodding through thick farmyard mud and your wellies are coming off, or you’re in a rush but every traffic light is on red. That’s exactly when you need something good to happen.

“Donna, look at the new chandelier** that Craig the electrician put up.”

Donna looked, “Yes, it looks really good.”

“Which one did you look at?”

“That one, we only have one. Actually, we could only afford one, they’re too expensive.”

“Yes, but come over here and look at the light in the reception area.”

Donna walked from the top of the stairs to the recaption area.

“Hang on, there’s two, how come we didn't notice? And we didn’t order two.”

So we rifled through the important documents which we had screwed up and squeezed into a cardboard box to see what the delivery note said.

“Here it is, it’s all screwed up though. Why don’t we take paperwork seriously?”

“What does it say?”

“It says that only one was delivered. Odd.”

So we rang the sparky, “Hiya Craig, you put two chandeliers up but we only bought one. Any idea how we have two?”

“Hiya mate. Well, two arrived, so I put two up. I knew one was for over the stairs, I just assumed that the other one was for the reception area. Is that OK?”

“Yes, no problem, cheers Craig.’

So we called the company who supplied them and explained what had happened, “Ah I see. Our mistake, no worries, we’ll pick it up next time we’re passing by.”

This company was over four hours drive away, and we were in central London, they would never be passing by.

And they never did.

And so we carried on.

Again, this was a later pic.

We were getting closer to opening, slowly, so we needed to start organising a team. We decided that we could do some interviews while we were putting up shelves and polishing glasses. Maybe just break off now and again, squeeze a few people in and have a quick interview.

We put an advert on something called Gumtree, a site where you could advertise for a member of staff, sell a mountain bike or buy a rabbit cage.

Now, this was the year 2008, pre Brexit, the job market was a different place back then.

So the next morning, we opened our email to check if anyone had responded.

If you think that we deserve a three quid coffee for writing this, that’s the button.

Ping! Ping! Ping! There were just over three hundred and sixty applicants. Yup, that’s 360 emails. If that happened in London now, a restauranteur would be jumping up and down like a giddy gibbon.

But it actually made it very difficult for us. How do you plough through all that? Do you just close your eyes and click on one? But what if the one before was great?

Why was everything so hard?

We took it in turns to sort through them. Both of us were happier varnishing shelves, but we had to get a team together.

And because there were so many, we would make a shortlist, but then when email number one hundred and eighty four was opened, we would decide that this person was a better fit than email number seventy two.

It went on for hours.

You would call email number forty nine and they wouldn't respond.

So then you go back to the emails and contact number two hundred and thirty three.

They sound nice, we arrange an interview with them instead.

Ten minutes later email number forty nine calls back and says that they have a missed call. And oh yes, they’d love to come along for an interview.

But by now we don’t need them because we have others coming along.

Oh no, what if they’re great, they sound good on the phone. OK, we can squeeze them in.

And on and on and on.

And one day the phone rang, it was Time Out magazine, they wanted to know our opening date.

So did we.

Top tip here, don’t tell them until you’re completely sure. If you pick a date, and you’re not ready, and a line of people are at the door while you’re painting the floor, things get tricky. So we put them off, actually, we put them off a few times. In the end we had to call them with a date, they were a bit sick of pestering us.

And on and on and on.

And on one particular morning, “Andrew, I turned the heating on but it doesn't work on this side of the building.”

It was an air conditioning system, it did hot or cold, depending on what you needed.

I popped downstairs to the room where the controls lived. A fuse had blown, no problem. I flicked it, then ran back upstairs.

“Right, give me three minutes to get back down to the fuse box, then press the switch again. I’ll see what happens.”

So, puffing like The Flying Scotsman, I ran back down to the fusebox. And I knew exactly when Donna had pressed the aircon switch, because a flash of light blew up in front of me.

It was a big flash of light. After my eyes adjusted I was expecting to see a genie stood in front of me with his arms folded.

“Your wish is my command.”

“Well for a start you can fix this bloody aircon mate. And how about going through the last hundred and twenty emails for us?”

Right, catch up next week to find out if life gets any easier.

Thanks for reading this, Andrew and Donna.

*I wonder if anyone takes that remark seriously.

**The word chandelier comes from the French word, chandelle, meaning candle.