Day off

Today was a well earned day off, the first in weeks. we drove to Holy Island.

Then to Berwick.

Followed by Seahouses (no pictures) and a random stop-off to let the dog have a pee.

A nice day.

19 mpg

We’ve swapped the car for the van this week. Despite the fact that it’s so expensive to run, we’re enjoying using the van every day.

Pizza

A conversation at work last night somehow ended in the proposal to make a pizza for the dog.

I’d never previously seen her eat so much, so quickly, before. She ate half and would have consumed more had we not removed the other half.

An earlier meal yesterday involved grass.

Salted herring

Bought these three years ago in Belgium. They’re a couple of years out of date and the bag had started to swell up.

I’d never fancied them, but came across them again while in a wine induced foraging state. They’re so nice.

Of course, I may now die.

Bar staff

While the pub can’t open due to the current Covid-19 situation, it’s important that we prepare for our eventual reopening.

Our new barperson in training.

Diseased

Around three weeks ago, I picked up a virus; mostly nausea, fever and a bit of a cough. I didn’t (couldn’t) eat for a week, which left me a little feeble and wobbly afterwards.

Unfortunately, the virus (I’m assuming it’s the same, or a variant of) returned a few days ago. Thankfully, with only minor nausea. I’ve presumed that this is the Coronavirus and that, when well, I’ll be immune and safe to go about my business again. I mean, one would be extremely unlucky to be so unwell and not actually had the virus.

Knowing my luck!

Measures

I’d planned on a day off today, but did have a couple of things to do in the pub first (till stuff and cleaning surfaces). So I walked to work, did what I needed to do, then took a slow walk home. Because the weather was so nice, I walked over to Newcastle and wandered through Ouseburn.

The place was eerily quiet, with very few people running or cycling, although the city centre was still busy-ish. Not that I can criticise others, since I was out too. In my defence, this is my first walk, other than strictly for work, in three weeks.

Anyway, some pictures of places usually teeming with people on a sunny afternoon.

It’s a little tough in the pub business right now.

Covid-19

Well, I didn’t expect the pub trade to be easy. We came in at a bad time. We did know that buying-in to a summer pub in the autumn probably wasn’t the best idea, but we also knew that we only needed to get through the winter, before business would pick up.

The winter was probably harder than we’d expected, but we did get through it. But now, there’s Coronavirus. At first, the impact on business was slow, with no change in business. This week began with a busier than usual Monday and Tuesday, following a pretty decent week. But, then, Wednesday happened. The pub was empty during the day, with just a handful of customers coming to eat. The teatime regulars were there as usual, but daytime trade just dropped right off. Yesterday, usually a busy day, was the same. I wasn’t there last night, but the signs of a really poor night were there.

We’re now approaching the weekend; actually, Friday is usually a good extension of the weekend. If business continues at this rate, and the weekend is a failure, we’re really going to struggle and some hard decisions are going to have to be made.

The Government have announced grants, and we will qualify for one, but there’s no information as to how these can be claimed. Apparently, this is coming next week. However, with the assumption that any money would come through mid-April, that leaves a pretty big gap if we’re losing money every day and still need to pay staff and buy stock.

Right now, there’s not a lot we can do. Let’s see how the weekend goes.

TagTagTag

I’ve written on more than occasion about my old Nabaztag (actually a Nabaztag:Tag), from its purchase a lot of years ago, its original (very temporary as it turned out) resurrectionaround a decade ago, its more recent resurrection a few years, running from a Raspberry Pi (which ended when the Pi died when its charger exploded.

I may also have mentioned, last year, buying-in to a French crowdfunding exercise.

The kit (TagTagTag) arrived a few weeks ago, but I’d no spare time in which to attempt the (brutal) upgrade. Until a virus left me unable to do much other than dismantle an electronic rabbit (one of the earliest Internet of Things connected devices – pretty much an Amazon Echo forerunner, with ears).

Anyway, the main board (blue) had to be replaced with the new, purpose built board (green) and a Raspberry Pi Zero.

While some of the instructions were in English, some were only available in French. Still, there were lots of pictures, which was really helpful.

Initial boot-up and connection to Wi-Fi seemed to go OK.

And then I hit the first problem. The setup URL didn’t work, so I had to resort to the Router to obtain the rabbit’s IP address.

Which I was able to use to manage the settings. In line with the settings, the rabbit is now in sleep mode.

However, there are two outstanding problems: firstly, LEDs flash when the rabbit isn’t doing anything. And, secondly, there appears to be no sound.

It appears I way need to check connections tomorrow.