So it’s about that time again…. Well actually it’s more like bastard 4am!!! What can I say? My body clock is shot to shit – I’ve presently got The Enemy singing Towns like these – slipping very nicely I hasten to add in Staring at the rude bois by The Gallows on MTV2 (who by the way, Gallows, I saw the other month and who made it into my top three best ever live acts ever – but hey that’s a story for another time) and I have to say… I don’t know – what have I got to say?
It’s bastard-fooking-four-o’clock in the morning and I’m a little delirious to say the least – But fuck it…
I’ve just been so used to working a minimum of 70 – 90 hours a week for so long now that I’m just not used to this time on my hands.
I know what you’re thinking – What the hell is this guy moaning for?
But I’m feeling more than a little lost at the moment.
You see I’m really torn about what I want to do – you see, part of me really wants to try and raise the cash to go back into the restaurant and re-open it as my own place – but not to open it as it was. To change it how I know I could make it work.
One thing I have learnt from the last two years is that if you’re gonna do a restaurant – then do a restaurant – get the food right – get the service right – get the décor right – get the publicity right – advertise from day one that is what you are so there is no confusion whatsoever….
However if you’re gonna do a bar and a restaurant then stop what you are doing and look how you are gonna make that balance work. Personally for me I wanted the restaurant so much – and to be fair so did the directors or they would have changed it in June when we did the refurbishment.
However where I was, we had so much floor space allocated to a restaurant and then that given floor space only gave us a return that was less than the bar side of the business which if you think about it really ain’t gonna add up at the end of the day is it?
Therefore I’d love to be able to go back into the business and take over the leasehold so that I can make it my own and turn it into what I feel will work and how we could fill that given floor space – especially if I take into consideration some of the – and not all, before some of you spit your dummies out – other establishments in the area.
But what am I saying?
I can’t do that can I?
I don’t know y’know – I know I should really be putting all of efforts and making the most of the time I have on my hands to really get back into my writing like I told you guys in that last Blog.
I just feel so torn in two different directions at the moment. You see – I have so much love and passion for the restaurant where I worked I honestly – truly feel, that I seriously have unfinished business there…
But then I compare that passion against Ar’ Back Yard – and I feel torn. The book is my baby – but the restaurant was my reality – it was my day to day – my night to night and I’m gutted it closed down.
So what do I do eh? Any suggestions would be much greatly appreciated at this moment in time…
You see the reason I haven’t stepped up to the plate so far and gone to see the directors and say, 'Hey – Why Not… '
Is probably the same reason I’m not jumping on the plane to some ski resort to work as a Head Chef out there for the winter season, which is something that I could quite easily do at this moment in time as they are crying out for Chefs to start from next week.
The reason is quite simply this – because come January we will start the publicity campaign for Ar’ Back Yard with my publicists. And if truth be told, I really want to do around a four-month solid campaign to really get the book out there.
So again – How can I split the time if I want to go back into the restaurant and reset it up again?
Answers on a postcard please…
I mean I have to say that 2007 has been a full year to say the least – and I honestly believe that everything that has happened this year happened because it was possibly the right time for the events that have taken place to have – well basically taken place.
First off at the beginning of the year on the other side of the world I hasten to add I ran into somebody from the past who I hadn’t had any contact with for over a decade – somebody from the days of Ar’ Back Yard era – and it was just by chance (oh and by the way – if that person I’m talking about happens to be reading this, then bloody email me through the contact me section of the website will you, as I lost your fookin’ address and never had your phone number)
Anyway – we were basically in Vegas for the Ricky Hatton fight – we bowl into the hotel and walk up to the first Roulette Table in the place and there he was standing there. So – to cut a long story short we talked and thinking about it, even in that drunken haze from a ridiculously long flight tanked up with way too much alcohol I told this guy I’d written a book about Manchester back in the eighties and early nineties – I wasn’t even sure why I told him – especially as the book hadn’t crossed my mind for such a long time – but there I was telling him all the same anyway.
And you know what? I think this chance meeting was what set the book into motion. I remember even through that blurry haze him asking me, ‘Where is it published then?’
Which obviously it hadn’t been had it.
Sorry, I’m getting a little side tracked here… On the day I returned was the day that the three directors were there at the restaurant with the two interior designers they’d brought in to do a refurbishment on the restaurant.
It was at that moment in time I realised it was gonna be a busy year to say the least with a refurbishment in the pipeline and everything that was going to go hand in hand with that. I mean I didn’t even know at the time I was also gonna do the book…
However I think it was shortly after this, as I was sat at the bar of my local one Sunday afternoon minding my own business reading article about Ricky Hatton and those memories of Vegas suddenly flooded back to lad I’d run into – and that’s when for no apparent reason I suddenly filled with an urge to try once again with the book.
Only this time after spending years of sending out ten-to-fifteen proposals each time only to endure the endless stacks of rejection letters that I suddenly thought – fuck it – I’m just gonna send it one publisher and see how it goes…
The rest you know eh? Well maybe not all of it…
But that’s why I gonna save the story of the journey through the publishing process for my next Blog.
Next week you guys will get the final extract and Thiago’s final instalment of animation which he has promised will be fantastic. All I know at this moment in time is what the extract is – and if he – which I’m hoping he does – animates the section I think he will do then it will a great piece of work and will show yet another side to the story to date.
Okay – that’s it then until next week when I inform you about the extract.
Take it easy as always…
Anwar