My apostrophe crisis started on Thursday with the apparently simple job of writing up my New Year’s Eve menu. Simple enough until punctuation reared it’s ugly head. (Is ‘reared it’s ugly head’ a bit of a cliché – ah well).

Lamb’s kidneys is the dish that we plan to serve. At the moment it seems that it may be a dish that’s easier to cook than it is to spell.

Lamb’s kidneys was my first option; singular possessive. The kidneys wot used to belong to the lamb. There is a quandary here however; more than one lamb will be giving up their kidneys in the interest of New Year’s Eve dinner, so it then becomes a plural. As such the apostrophe goes after the s, thus: Lambs’ Kidneys.

But is there a convention here? Gulls’ Eggs or Gull’s Eggs? Duck’s Feet or Ducks’ Feet? Does the fact that I’m intending to capitalise the words make a difference by making it a title and therefore…..and therefore… I dunno… something else?

There are also those which have no apostrophes such as sports hall or accounts department; this (as I understand it) is because the are describing a type of whatever the noun might be i.e a hall of the sports variety. If we apply this argument to kidneys we can do away with the apostrophe altogether.

Should I seek professional advice? The trouble is, I don’t personally know anyone who could in anyway describe themselves as a literary professional. So I resorted to Twitter.

My choice of arbiter on things grammatical was journalist, Times columnist, restaurant critic and sometime television wossname Giles Coren.

My reasoning (after a couple of pints) went thus: He must have read innumerable menus in his time. He should know how to string a sentence together without any grammatical fuck-ups. He has no doubt consumed the odd lamb’s kidney. He also has a Twitter page. So I’ll ask him -

To my delight the esteemed Mr Coren took the trouble to reply;

Now, I will take into consideration that this was at about 11 in the evening and for all I know he may have been downing his third bottle of something delicious. It may be that his opinion might change in the cold light of day but for now we’re sticking with it.

So if you think it’s wrong, blame Giles Coren.

Afterthought: I considered titling this script ‘A word from Giles Coren’ No? Not funny?

It is quite possible that my memory has embellished this story a bit over the years – but I really don’t think so.

Years ago I used to run a pub in Cheltenham. We were in an area with a lot of competition; the nearest pub being literally three doors down the road. It was all very amicable - I got on really well with my competitor, a guy called Keith – We used to indulge in communal dog walking last thing at night and could often be seen strolling round the local park at the wrong side of midnight with gin and tonic in hand whilst the dogs gambolled about.

Keith was a great operator with a reputation for being ‘a bit of character’. He probably still is a great operator, we lost touch a few years ago. Last time I saw him he was running a pub in Mayfair. He may well still be there.

One summer evening a largish bunch of us gathered together for a bit of a pub crawl. It was Keith’s assistant manager’s stag night. This was obviously in days of yore: Nowadays, stag celebrations seem to involve a long weekend in somewhere exotic.

We toured the hostelries of Cheltenham partaking in a beer or two in each and arrived back at Keith’s pub at around closing time or possibly a bit after. Keith at this point announces that we are having a ‘lock in’ and summons a round of drinks for all and sundry.

Now given that the front of the pub is on the main thoroughfare and has floor to ceiling windows, this was not the most discreet place in the world to have a few after-hours drinks. We decided that phoning the local constabulary and advising them that a private party was occurring was probably going to be a good idea. ‘Have you got a phone number?’ my friend enquired. I had.

He bumbled off to make the appropriate phone call only to return a couple of minutes later. ‘Is there another number – they don’t seem to be answering?’ Now bear in mind that by this time we had all consumed considerable quantities of alcohol. I gave him another number which I think was the right one, although with hindsight it could’ve been the local cat’s home. I left him to it.

Didn’t see him then for another half hour or so but the party continued, considerably more alcohol was consumed and the stag night crowd had sort of melded with the remaining pub customers to create a bit of a throng.

I left the group of people I was talking to and spoke to Keith a while later. ‘Did you get through to the police station’ I enquired?

‘Well, not exactly got through….’ he said.

‘So………’ I asked.

It transpired that he had tried phoning a couple more times and got no answer. At this point he decided that it would be a good idea to get into his car and DRIVE to the police station.

He alleged (and I have no reason to doubt) that he parked the car on the yellow cross-hatched bit outside the police station. He then went to the front desk, rang the bell and tersely announced ‘Against my better judgement I have just driven up here whilst PISSED because you won’t answer your fucking telephone!’

‘He then proceeded to explain the (somewhat agape) civilian at the desk exactly who he was and why he was there and then said; ‘And now I’m going to drive back again’.

Whilst he was telling me this he was sitting in the window of the pub with a large brandy in his hand. He was about to explain to the officer (who we assumed was bound to turn up in a minute) that he hadn’t really been drinking and was just making a point. However since he got back he’d been drinking like a fish and that there was really no point in breathalysing him!

Amazingly, we carried on until the wee hours and no one ever turned up.

I remember that as a small child I would occasionally be offered a slice of pork pie with salad for my tea. Well offered is the wrong word, given would be more accurate, it’s not like it was optional. Not the little individual pies but the long loaf shaped ones with the eggs all the way through. Gala Pie I think it’s called, gala as in festival, though what it has to do with a gala I have yet to discover.

The thing is, I was never very keen on it. Firstly I had a bit of an aversion to egg whites. White and rubbery and not tasting of a fat lot. Loved the yolks though. Secondly I really wasn’t keen on the aspic jelly that surrounded the meat. So I would eat the meat and the egg yolk and possibly the pastry and leave the jelly and the egg white on the side of the plate, much to the disgust my mother.

It’s funny how your tastes change as you get older – I’m now quite fond of a hard-boiled egg once in a while, white and all. I also quite like the aspic jelly in pork pies; it adds some extra moisture and makes them more succulent. Herein lies the problem – it would seem that whilst I have been growing to enjoy the traditional pork pie the rest of the world has developed an aversion to aspic jelly. Or at least pie manufacturers seem to have come to that conclusion because jelly in pork pies is generally in short supply.

Out of step with the world again.

Went to Sainsbury’s a couple of weeks ago to find that a good number of the staff were in fancy dress – Victorian style, one was actually dressed up as a chimney sweep complete with blackened face and the like. (Well I assume that was the case – he could of course just have been an inherently grubby member of staff to start with.) Several were dressed as maids or serving wenches. One was even wearing a top hat for crissake!

Why? It seems that they were celebrating the one hundred and something or other anniversary of old man Sainsbury opening his first shop in wherever the hell it was. North London rings a bell.

I suppose I should be delighted that some of the staff enjoy themselves enough to make the effort and dress up for the occasion. We have been known to do something similar for Halloween and the like.

I confess that the immediate thought that went through my head was ‘you look like a twat’.

Note to self: Try to be less of a miserable old bugger.

I don’t get to read as much as I would like these days. Partly because I don’t have the time and partly because when I do have the time (usually somewhere around midnight) I’m just too tired and my head falls off after about two pages.

Why did I tell you this? Well it was sort of apropos of the fact that I spent a few minutes wandering around the paperback section of WH Smiths the other day and noticed, not for the first time, that there is now a whole new genre of books featuring stories of child abuse.

It seems to have been spawned a few years back with a book called "A Child Called It" which I believe features the true life account of someone’s appalling abused childhood . I haven’t read it and I have no intention of reading it. Subsequent books of the genre, and they seem to be myriad, also have straplines on the cover such as ‘true life account’, ‘horrific tale’, ‘terrible real life experience’ and suchlike.

Now I think I understand why one might want to write such a book. If one has had a childhood filled with trauma and abuse, then telling the tale may well be cathartic. I am not a psychoanalyst, I don’t know this for sure, but they are the guys who expound at length about suppressed feelings so I assume that writing the whole thing down would be away of letting it all out. Furthermore I would guess that if you were that psychoanalyst you would find the account fascinating.

But I’m not a psychoanalyst or even a student of psychology. Nor do I claim to have a lay interest the subject.

What I am getting at is that I understand that if someone was ‘fiddled about’ with by Uncle Johnny when they were six years old then they may well gain some mental wellbeing from writing a book about it. What I don’t get is why on earth I would want to read about it? Is it a form of voyeurism, a sort of there but for the grace of god…, a morbid fascination?

I don’t know but rightly or wrongly I find it a little repugnant.

Call me shallow - but give me a little light fiction anytime!

I had to go out yesterday and buy a new printer. Mine had finally died after a longish illness. It sometimes used to vomit out pages and pages of random symbols until it was switched off and rebooted after which it would sometimes refuse to print anything at all. Occasionally it just contemptuously spat  out scrumpled sheets. (Is scrumpled a real word or is it just a mongrel version of screwed and crumpled?) It finally gave up the ghost and refused to do anything other make a noise like a mangled gearbox.

A good friend recently confided in me that when his printer was on it’s last legs, he took it out into the garden, swore at it and proceeded to beat it to death with a hammer. It reminded me of the scene in Fawlty Towers where Basil chastises his car with a stick. I empathise with both of them.

I tootled down to Currys, selected new printer with advice from the 14-year-old acned assistant.

‘Would you like some replacement cartridges as well, because the one’s it comes with are only testers and don’t hold much ink?’

I would.

‘I’ll have that one then’ and picked one off the shelf

At which point I got a tad confused because my spotty helper then picked another one off the shelf and headed off towards the checkout.

‘So I’ll put this one back then’  I said

‘But surely……..oh it doesn’t matter’  I gave up at this point, followed him back to the checkout and placed my purchase on the counter. He proceeded to swipe the one he had in his hand and put it under the counter and then placed the one I’d put on the counter in carrier bag. I could be bothered to ask!

He punched a few buttons on the till and then uttered the really irritating words ‘Can I have your name and address please’

‘Why?’ Now I have no reason on earth NOT to give the poor child my address but thereagain why the hell should I.

I goes quiet while he clicks away at a few buttons, he the looks up and says ‘Can I have you postcode?’ Jeez he’s not getting this is he!

By this time there is a queue of people building up, some of whom are tutting; whether in sympathy or disapproval I don’t know and by this point I don’t really give a monkey’s.

I sighed, enough is enough. ‘Well look, if you’re not going to send me anything you have even less reason for wanting my address than you did previously. I am not going to give you my name, my address or my sodding postcode. I you’d like to continue with this sale without them, then let’s get on with it, if not I am going to walk out of the shop, leave this stuff on the counter and go and buy it all elsewhere.’

Amazingly we managed to complete the transaction with very little else being said.

I think I am turning into the original grumpy old man.

I’m sure that by now a few people have realised that I’m prone to my own little rant now and again. In fact it is something that I have only recently realised of myself – it came as a bit of a revelation. I always though I was an easy going, well balanced and tolerant sort of individual until I started reading my own writings. (Does that make sense?) I think it was then confirmed when I read a copy of "Grumpy Old Men" and found myself agreeing with the authors far more often than was comfortable.

I’m sure that in every household there must be a small and mundane task that takes only a few seconds to do, but is neglected by everyone who lives there, with the exception of the one frustrated soul who ends up believing that there is no one else in the world capable of completing the aforesaid task apart from themselves.

Well for me it’s replacing toilet rolls on their little spindles. It seems that in our house no one is really bothered or irritated by it but me, so perhaps it’s me that’s in the wrong. I am a little concerned that I may be starting to sound obsessive here. Given that I’m not even a particularly tidy person perhaps this is the start of some strange form of OCD.

I decided one day in a fit of pique that I wasn’t going to change the bloody spindle any more, I was going to wait and see how long it was before someone else did it. Now being a mean and frugal lot we tend to buy our cheapo loo rolls in great big economy size packs. I would leave them off the spindle, I decided and see just how many rolls out of this pack of twenty-four we went through before someone else decided to do it.

I’m sure you’ve guessed the answer; it’s twenty-four. To preserve my tenuous hold on sanity I’ve decided to continue replacing them again myself.

Well let’s face it – no one else is going to!

Most of us who have spent any length of time doing a job can very easily identify with others in a similar field. I watched a television series called ‘Hotel Babylon’, all about the goings on behind the scenes in a luxury hotel in London. The book from which the series was taken is apparently based on the anecdotes and experiences of a man who has been in various management roles in the London hotel industry for twenty-odd years. I read it and loved it.

Christmas Party Season.

There are, of course, various categories of drunk - amorous, comatose, nauseous and plain bloody irritating to name a few.

In this business the Christmas party season can be a nightmare. We can cope with our regular drinkers, as they generally know their limitations and are reasonably aware of the consequences of of their alcohol consumption. Something strange seems to happen at office Christmas parties. People who don’t go to pubs and bars for the rest of the year suddenly appear out of the woodwork. They seem to believe that they can consume vast quantities of alcohol with impunity and are often loud and aggressive. And just to make life interesting the regular drinkers who normally know their limits seem to get carried along with the seasonal cheer and end up being just as bloody bad.

Lucy was charming, very attractive woman in her mid twenties who came into the latter category – a regular customer who was usually came in for a few quietish drinks with her mates.

Until the office Christmas party.

I’d spent the early part of the evening in the office shuffling paperwork. I’ve used and visited a great many offices in pubs and bars all over the country and this one was fairly typical inasmuch as it was about the size of a broom cupboard. Space in most bars tends to be in short supply and offices are usually a bit of an afterthought. They all seem to share pretty much the same clutter; a bottle or two of something alcoholic which have been consigned to the office because there is something wrong with them, a stack of promotional material for either a forthcoming event or left over from last Valentines Day, a plastic ice cream tub full of keys that don’t fit anything, several boxes of till rolls and a pint glass containing a few pens, staples and the like. Pub offices are not designed for spending quality time in; in fact I can think of very few offhand that even have window.

I emerged into the hubbub of the public area to find Lucy on the wrong side of the bar conducting a conversation from behind the Guinness tap whilst a member of the bar staff tried to prise her away and serve another customer at the same time.

‘Hi Luce, what you up to?’

The staff member involved looked at me gratefully. ‘She’s all yours!’

Lucy peered at me, swaying slightly.

‘Oh, Hi Chris, this gorgeous man here says he wants a pint of Guinness’

She was coherent at least.

‘Lucy, you don’t work here!’

‘I know, but I’m helping’

‘Well thanks Luce, but do me favour and stay round the other side of the bar could you? Go and join your friends over there, tell you what, I’ll come with you’

I escorted her over to the table where her where her work colleagues were giggling, chatted to them all briefly and left them to it.

That should have be the end of that but for some alcohol-fuelled reason Lucy had it in her head that night that she really should be behind the bar. We repeated the scenario another three times during the evening. Each time, as she got more pissed, it was getting increasingly difficult to persuade her to move. Thank God it was nearly closing time.

And there she was again.

‘Lucy sweetheart, any chance you could go round the other side?’ I said. I put my arm around her waist and started to usher her towards the bar hatch.

She slipped both her arms round my neck, and with a slightly glazed expression, peered into my eyes ‘But Chris I’m helping, I really like helping, I want to help.’

She was breathing clouds of unadulterated Jack Daniel’s into my face from a range of about four inches.

‘What can I do to help Chris’ she said ‘Tell you what then……’ She pushed herself against me, and stared at me with complete seriousness ‘Is there any chance of a shag?’

Hmmm, tricky one!

‘Lucy you’ve got a boyfriend who comes in here with you on a regular basis and anyway it’s closing time now and your friends are waiting for you’ I glanced over to their table and waved. Fortunately, they waved back. ‘Look Lucy they’re waving’

She looked over ‘Oh yeah, well ok, see you soon’ she slurred.

And was gone.

She came in for lunch a couple of days later. I spoke to her at the bar.

‘Hi Lucy, how was the head after the party?’

‘Oh hello Chris, no, wasn’t good. Don’t remember too much after about ten o’clock though. Think I had a good time!’

‘So you don’t remember coming behind the bar then?’

‘NO WAY! Why was I behind the bar’

‘Apparently you wanted to help!’

‘Help what? Hmmm, no, sorry if I was being pain, I was a bit pissed’

‘Yeah, we noticed! - Oh, and about the third or fourth time you came behind the bar you offered to have sex with me!’

‘You’re winding me up now!’

‘Er, no, actually I’m not’

‘Oh shit! Did I? Fuck! Sorry, that wasn’t supposed to happen!’

Without another word she went to join her friends at the table for lunch.

She came back to the bar about half an hour or so later whilst her friends were drinking coffee. ‘Chris, can I have a word.’

‘Yeah sure, what’s up?’

‘Chris, you know the other night, when I er…. offered to have sex with you?’ She glanced down at her feet and then looked up again slightly sheepishly, ‘You did turn me down didn’t you?’

I didn’t have the heart to lie!

‘Yes, Luce I turned you down!’

‘Thanks!’

She turned and headed back towards the table, I watched her walking away. She really was an attractive woman. About halfway she hesitated, turned, and came back. She looked me sternly in the eye and said ‘So If you turned me down what’s fucking wrong with me then?’ She grinned and walked away.

You can’t win.

I’m a great lover of the Sunday Times ‘Style’ Supplement, not that I have any ideas of being stylish, just that there are two features in there that I particularly like – One is the fairly lengthy weekly restaurant review ‘Table Talk’ by the renowned AA Gill. In fact lengthy review is a bit of a misnomer, it’s probably better described as a lengthy article with a hundred or so words of restaurant review tagged onto the end. It make great reading, often causing me to laugh out loud and occasionally causing me to go scrabbling for a dictionary as Mr Gill’s vocabulary being considerably better than mine.

It was reported in several newspapers over the weekend that the pubs in Gordon Ramsay’s restaurant empire (I believe there are three or four) are supplied with some of the dishes on their menus by a central production kitchen. They produce food in bulk and then deliver it portioned and packed, ready for reheating. It is a method know as ‘sous vide’ – French for ‘under vacuum’ where food is placed in a vacuum pouch and cooked, or in this case reheated to the required serving temperature with it’s accompanying sauce. This process is perhaps better known by most of us as "boil in the bag".

Someone popped in the pub recently who I haven’t seen for ages. In fact I haven’t seem him since I the days of yore when I was running a different pub.

I didn’t really know him that well even in those days but I was friendly with his girlfriend at the time – We’ll call her Jane. (I’ve a feeling that this is going to sound so wrong!). In fact it was about the time when he had just starting going out with Jane and their relationship was all new and exciting; fluffy bunnies, touchy feely and so forth. I’m sure you get the picture.

Being friendly with Jane, I used to get regular updates on the progress of the relationship; how they were getting on, how charming he was, how funny and caring etc. And no, she hadn’t slept with him yet but to rest assured, she’d let me know when she did.

So the day arrived a week or so later when she did. Let me know that is, and the gist of the conversation was that when they made love he made a bit of noise at the point of climax. I suggested that this was not altogether out of the ordinary and that (given that he was certainly not the first person she’d ever slept with) she must have come across this phenomenon before.

She looked at me and said ‘Chris you don’t understand -When he comes he sounds like donkey’!

She proceeded to demonstrate a long, protracted braying noise ‘eeeeeeeeyyyooooooorre, eeeeeeeeyyyooooooorre, eeeeeeeeyyyooooooorre’ which caused the people sat on the next table to look across amusedly.

The relationship was fairly short lived – I don’t know if the sound effects contributed to its demise.

My problem is that once someone has given you a piece of information like that it is very difficult NOT to conjure an image in your head whenever you see them thereafter. I hadn’t seen him years and the first thing I thought of was ‘eeeeeeeeyyyooooooorre’!

I kind of wish she hadn’t told me.

Do you clean the bathroom whilst naked? I do. Although I realise that this is not an image that anyone could conceivably wish to conjure up in his or her mind’s eye I thought I would share this piece of information with the world.

Naked bathroom cleaning seems to make sense; have a shower and then clean the cubicle. Having just had a shower one tends to be somewhat bereft of clothing and getting dressed just to sluice out a wet bathroom is a bit of a pointless exercise. So whilst still dripping I tend to lurch around the very small bathroom, clutching my squirty bottle of Mr Muscle, spraying everything in sight, and sifting through the various day-glo pink, flourescent green, or sometimes radioactive yellow bottles and trying to eradicate the concomitant streaks of shampoo that have somehow decorated the tiles since my last visit.

I should perhaps spend my cleaning time trying to understand why we need nine different flavours of shampoo - most of which apparently contain added extract of turnip root or some other herbaceous ingredient guaranteed to make your hair stronger or shinier and more manageable, whatever that means. Do men actually buy shampoo and if they do what flavour do they buy? Or use? Or prefer come to that? The answers to these questions in my case are a) I never buy shampoo b) the one which first comes to hand when standing in the shower and c) I don’t know which one I prefer because I really don’t pay that much attention. It seems likely that the reason for having so many shampoo bottles is largely due to the fact that one of my bathroom co-users is teenage and female.

Oh, and my bathroom cleaning technique also saves on towels as well – by the time I’ve sloshed out the bath, fished out various bits of unidentifiable detritus from the plughole and removed the bluey-green skidmark of toothpaste from the side of the basin I’m almost dry. Time to put some clothes on.

I had an adventuresome afternoon last Friday and actually spent some time outside the confines of the pub. I must emphasise that this is a somewhat rare occurrence – my only regular excursions these days are to Sainsbury’s and Cash and Carry. I know, it’s sad isn’t it! (But unfortunately true).

Well I got to see other shops this week, one of which sold shoes. I haven’t been inside a shoe shop for ages. As some of you will know I have a propensity for flip flops – Birkenstock for preference, which I shove on my feet as soon as Spring is in the air (which would be about now) and continue to wear thoughout the summer and onward until it gets too cold and my toes start to turn blue. Probably not attractive, but incredibly comfortable.

It was at the point where I came across a display of Hush Puppies that the memories back to me. The display had a big fat sign saying Hush Puppies and the little picture of the dog and it occurred to me that they had been using a Basset Hound to market their shoes for as long as I can remember. So long in fact that I remember them as a small child; and that really is a long time ago.

The point is that as children we make associations based on what we are told and what we see. I knew that cows produced milk although I’d never seen one. (There weren’t many in North London). I knew that chickens laid eggs, probably from a picture book. I had learned somehow that leather was made of animal skin. I also knew that fur coats were made out of fluffy things which had perished for the cause. I suspect that some readers can see where I am going with this.

I seem to remember being told that these suede shoes (all Hush Puppies were suede back in the day) were expensive – perhaps they were back in nineteen sixty something or other, I don’t really know. I do know however that the fact that I thought that they were expensive served to reinforce my belief - Hush Puppies were made out of Basset Hounds!

Am I on my own with this one? Surely other children must have come to same conclusion.

What is it about sexual innuendo? I’m told that I have a proclivity for it. In fact I think it’s probably contagious because it seems that those who work with me find that within a few weeks their ears are finely attuned to possibilities of slipping one in whenever they can. (You see - I just can’t help it).

Once upon a time (and, I might add, until fairly recently) an Ironing Fairy used to live in our house. I used to be able to put a mound of dirty clothes in the washing machine and very often I would not see them again until they re-appeared in the wardrobe, pristinely ironed and hung on hangers.

I’ve just spent an hour or so tidying my office (a relative term in my case) and found a great big pile of unopened copies of The Morning Advertiser (a trade magazine). I naturally lingered for a while and am now fully au fait with the highs and lows of the pub industry over the last couple of months. (Lows mostly). I learned that ginger celebrity chef AWT has closed a couple of his pubs having failed to raise an unsecured £200k from the bank to tide them over. The quote went something like "If you owe them £200k they have you by the balls, however if you owe them £10 million you have them by the balls". I’d never thought of it like that but I think he’s probably right.

Well thanks to Mr AWT and the staff of The Morning Advertiser my office still doesn't look much better, other than the fact that a large pile of slightly fingered magazines have been consigned to the bin having had a few pages ripped out and kept.No doubt in a week or two I shall wonder why I kept the few pages in the first place.

With the exception of writing menus, adverts and the odd bit of website publicity blurb I have never before written prose for public consumption.

I would have probably have had a go in the past but fear of ridicule sort of inhibits us when we’re younger (well I think it did me) and I’ve now reached the age when I really don’t care what anyone thinks. Perhaps it’s nothing to do with age; perhaps it’s just a state of mind, either way it’s very liberating.

I really don’t know where I’m going with this, should I include the odd recipe or two and make it a bit of a foodie thing or should I just waffle indiscriminately and see where it takes us? At the moment I’m opting for the latter and hoping that we find our own direction as we go.