TOPIC:

Streamline - I think your partner has come up with a really good idea. I think that would be great - keeping the barrier but allowing for increased light and sight-lines. She has vision! (Maybe you came up with the idea and I didn't have the vision until your partner drew it out for me?)

I think this compromise has a lot going for it. If I was doing it in my house I think I would want to see a large steel plate welded to the top of the supporting post to cater for the spread of load of the wide wall above, and maybe also at the bottom to spread the load on the surviving half of the wall segment. However, I'm sure we have design experts among our membership to take care of those details.

Thanks to all for a stimulating day's discussion. My phone has 13 messages saying that new replies (probably not including my own) have been added to this topic - don't think I have ever seen that before in one day. Good to hear from some board members - many thanks. However, if this project gets general go-ahead approval I still think there should be a business case for the expenditure. Maybe Streamline's idea about selling drinks from the bit of the bar facing the snug would lead to an increase the overall flow of the beer - which might also be relevant for the business urgency of sorting out the gents' toilets.

Probably best to ask Arron about the doors if you want more information. i spoke to him yesterday and he isn't aware of any issues with the doors, it hasn't been raised by the fire officer and we have an in date fire certificate, however Arron is meeting the fire officer soon and will discuss. It should be noted he has been in recently and was happy with what he saw. Also Arron lives upstairs and has no concerns with these doors!

John - Yes, it's good that others are getting involved in this stuff.

Bushy, I am pretty well in agreement with most of what you say. Even with a convincing business case and a well-designed solution my preference would actually still be to leave that remaining segment of wall alone. I believe the Bell is more than just an exceptionally good music venue. I would be surprised if live music actually plays for much more than about 10% of the total opening time of the pub, so whether the existing snug should be compromised for the sake of allowing a few more people to see the musicians on the stage at certain times is obviously what we are debating. Who knows, a future management board may decide, in the interests of improving the flow of beer, to increase circulation around the front door and the bar by shifting the musician playing area up to the far end of the main seating area, and a future generation might then be puzzled as to we tampered with the old snug!

However, I don't however agree with you on that question you raised about dogs. In the main I believe that, like you and me, they are mostly sociable beings, and should be allowed reasonable freedoms to be off their leads whenever practical - except when there are sheep in the vicinity.

Oh, I forgot that people get emails of transcripts who follow the thread!

That was about a conversation I had yesterday with a shareholder who is also a regular, but who never expresses his opinions in public. I took it down because I thought he should express them, but I don't think he will.

The gist of it was that the 'pillar' is a good example of the conflict between drastic change and the principles of conservation. I have spent a lot of my working life restoring and conserving expensive bits of stone and marble sculpture and architectural antiques, and the golden rule is that you do not leave your mark on your work for all to see forever more, unless you deliberately want others to see the difference between the restoration and the original, like a lot of museums do.

So I am sensitised to any possibility of drastic things being done to the fabric of the pub, so that one or two people can say, "We did that. Good, isn't it?"

Having said that, I pestered Ian Wood for a year or two to let me make the hanging bell sign on the front to replace the traditional sign, and Caspar Taylor and I made it just before the buy-out. (No part of the original fabric was harmed in the making, apart from three drill-holes). Good, isn't it?

There are a couple of new signs to take posters for the front of the pub being made right now, and they are truly beautiful. I mentioned to the commissioning board-member how good R's signs were looking, and they said, "They're not R's signs, they're MY signs". That's when an alarm bell went off in my head.