On Saturday the latest edition had a very good article by top Norfolk chef and restauranteur Richard Hughes about the spiralling cost of eating out. It looked at both sides of the situation from the customers to the providers.
We first came across Richard when he owned the Number 24 restaurant in Wymondham. We went there as often as we could afford, which was never as often as we might have liked. Richard invariably came out for a chat.
He subsequently took on a restaurant in Brundall by the name of the Lavender House and also the Assembly Rooms in Norwich. We had afternoon tea at the Assembly Rooms before COVID struck and Richard recognised us. It's always nice to be recognised.
In his article, Richard says that the cost of providing food has spiralled through the rising cost of ingredients and through rent and council tax, soaring energy costs and much more. At the same time he realises that the public don't want to pay £20 for basic fish and chips.
Profit margins are being hit and people in the catering sector are working incredibly long hours for relatively little rewards which continues to diminish. As a result many restaurants are closing and the article names a number in Norwich that have shut. Others may well follow. One owner said she was closing as she had no work life balance.
We had an example of the ridiculous hours people are having to work with a chat with one of the staff at our son's wedding. He came on duty at 2 pm and reckoned it would be 3 am before he finished. That's a working day of 13 hours with few breaks and much of it in what would be called unsocial hours.
So many people are leaving the catering industry that some places are having to cut opening hours or only opening on certain days of the week. Sadly the cost of eating out whether it be at a restaurant or in a pub will continue to increase and we will all be faced with the same question: Do we eat out or not or do we order that takeaway or not?
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So onto the subject of politics. What a piece of work Nadine Dorries is. She has at last resigned, but resigned in such a way as to cause the maximum harm to the party she is supposed to represent.
They say there is no I in team but Ms Dorries obviously spells that word TEIAM with the emphasis on the I Am bit. I'm sure everyone knows the situation here but for any that don't. In a nutshell Ms Dorries stated she was resigning after what she declared was the unfair treatment in getting rid of the Blond Buffoon (sorry Boris Johnson). Other MPs resigned and by elections took place, including one in Johnson's own constituency
Time went by and there was no resignation from Dorries who obviously decided that she really didn't want to give up her lucrative job despite earning plenty by appearing on the reality show "I'm a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here". She also writes novels.
A woman of the people you might think, but you would be wrong. Ms Dorries is MP for mid Bedfordshire. But people living there state that she is rarely seen in her constituency and has done nothing for it for some time (shades of Richard Bacon in our own South Norfolk here). I can only surmise that Ms Dorries has been shall we say low profile in her constituency because she has been spending all her time constructing her resignation letter and apologising for not representing the people she was elected to represent.
At last she put her head above the parapet to say that she had been working really hard on constituency matters, but by this time very few people believed her.
Then she did the honourable thing and actually did resign but there was no going quietly into the night. Instead she attacked the current PM with a blast of vitriol.
The problem with many of our parliamentary representatives is that they have no connection with the people they represent. Ms Dorries comes from Liverpool and you don't need a degree in Geography to know that 1/ Liverpool is a long way from Bedfordshire and 2/ the characters of the two areas are very different.
The phrase square peg in a round hole or should that be round peg in a square hole comes to mind. Oh and there's just the small matter that Ms Dorries is a trifle miffed because the Blond Buffoon promised her a peerage that never materialised. Quite a case of being up herself.
I apologise if any of my forthright views have upset anyone but to me Nadine Dorries stands for much of what is wrong with our country at the moment - too many inflated egos.
And having said that I'm now going to write 10,000 words about myself! Only joking.
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Yesterday I mentioned the never ending number of cruise brochures that come through our letterbox literally every day of the week apart from Sundays. Last week I think we had 10.
There are a lot of cruises on offer and once you have been on one you will be bombarded with brochures offering you so called prices that you just can't ignore.
Every brochure now has discounts, although I've no idea how you can prove that the original price was ever available. Now we seem to be getting very late bargains - you know the thing, cheap cruises if you can sail from Newcastle or Liverpool in two weeks time. I suspect that if you check on the internet a week later you will get the same cruise even cheaper as they try to fill cabins (sorry they are now called staterooms).
You could be sitting round a table of six couples on a cruise who all have cabins (sorry staterooms) from the same category and every one of those couples will have paid a different price. Same goes for air fares and train travel etc.
I have a feeling that this is all going to end in tears with some cruise companies going the way of restaurants. It's all a mess.
Of course all the brochures promise you the trip of a lifetime and incredible value. We got one on Friday that listed the benefits of their cruise and in large letters it included (and I quote) - "parking your car at the port from only £221." Now paying over £200 to park my car is not a perk but something that might actually put me off. This company was obviously struggling for reasons why you should cruise with them as another benefit was "A premium value, authentic and traditional cruise experience." I'm not sure what a non authentic cruise would look like.
How long before a cruise company goes bust while you are in the middle of the ocean and literally cast adrift? Ok that was a flippent remark, or was it?
We have just booked flights to go to Madeira next February. The flights with Easyjet were well priced but it's going to cost us almost as much to take a suitcase. Ridiculous. We will be travelling as light as possible because we will be staying at a Holiday Property Bond complex and will have a washing machine. The other threequarters will just have to desist from taking 10 different outfits, although she does look very nice ( but don't tell her that). I think she has long given up reading my blogs.
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Yesterday I had a lengthy walk around the village of over three miles to have a look at some of the garage sale pitches. The event was organised by the Friends of Hethersett VC Primary School. Then when the other threequarters came home she told me I just had to go and see a couple who had opened their garden to the public.
"It's just amazing, " she said. I broke my rule of not taking the car to events in the village for two reasons.
After walking over three miles my ankle injured in playing tennis was feeling very sore and also I had to hurry before the garden closed.
It was as good as I had been told. Spoke to Mike the owner and took photos which will appear in the next Hethersett Herald. As a taster I include one with this blog.
I just had to get the photos in the next edition of the magazine and so spent the afternoon doing that. I mentioned that the coming edition was much slimmer than usual but it's bright and breezy with a lot of colourful photos.