We are absolutely ecstatic to be able to tell you that we have finally got our Licence! Yesterday we spent the whole morning at the Licensing Board waiting for our case to be heard and we were given the great news around lunch time that we had been approved! It hasn’t been without its problems (hence why we haven’t opened when we thought we would) and we did meet with some objections from our very near neighbours but luckily for us the Licensing Board took no notice and granted it anyway!
We’re not out of the woods yet though. Since this is just a provisional licence we have to apply for the full licence which takes a few weeks so in the meantime we are awaiting news of our temporary (occasional) licence being accepted which would allow us to open hopefully by next week. I will update the blog as soon as we have notification about the opening date but for now we are looking at week commencing 7th November or thereabouts.
At last we can start to take bookings for mid November onwards and especially the Christmas period which is already filling up! We are already fully booked for Friday 16th December in the evening so that is a date to be avoided but other days still looking ok. We are still on the same telephone number 0141 332 3070 so you can give us a call (leave a message if we aren’t there!).
Apart from the Licensing Board Hearing, we’ve had a huge amount of things to finish off to make sure we are ready to open hopefully next week. At the end of last week we took delivery of a huge marble statue which at the time of ordering it seemed like a good idea, hmmmmm. When we ordered this 450 kilo statue a couple of months ago, it must have slipped our minds that we had to carry it down 2 flights of winding stairs. As with all great delivery companies, they refuse to help for health and safety reasons (ie they are not daft) so it was left up to us to get it down there.
When the driver arrived, Ilia went off to the truck to check the delivery. Her screams could possibly be heard at the other side of Glasgow “Daaaaaaad!” as she looked with horror at the giant crate packed with hay and this head poking out of the top of the crate. Bacchus had arrived. When the driver hoisted it onto the pavement we realised the scale of this thing. The crate took up the whole width of the pavement meaning that anyone that needed to get past with a pram, wheelchair etc, had to go onto the road to get past! We had enlisted the help of a couple of strong men in advance knowing it would be heavy so they set about trying to break into the crate to get the statue out. We had hay all over the pavement and road, broken pieces of crate, the old restaurant chairs to lie the Bacchus on, basically we took up the whole street. By this time, the driver has departed, leaving us to ponder how we would get it down the stairs. During this time, we had a visit from a new wine supplier who was just dropping in some samples so he was forced to help us. We also had our next door neighbour and his friend who just passed by to ask when we were opening, we kidnapped them too and they formed part of our team of lifters.
Having decided that for our own safety, we ought to secure it with a rope, poor Bacchus was bound up by the neck and suspended from the rope with 2 of our strong men holding on to it. Underneath we had the other strong men manoeuvering it down the stairs. You have never heard so much groaning and screaming in your life. It was like a cross between the noises you hear at a wrestling match and those big weight lifters at the Olympics when they lift a really heavy weight. Big groans, screams and lots of swearing in Italian, my sides were sore with laughing. The poor wine man who was only dropping off some wine, ended up trapping his finger between the statue and the wall, Costanzo strained his neck and is now walking like he has a coat hanger in his jacket and every one of us are now walking about like the hunchback of notre dame. We should get danger money! Whilst all of this was going on, there were lots of twitching of curtains from the neighbouring houses, curious to know what was going on. Two hours after it was delivered, Bacchus was finally in place and our magnificent neighbours who just popped by, our wonderful wine guy who we had never met before but I am sure that we will be imprinted on his mind (and finger) forever, Dario Costanzo’s nephew, Arthur (chief rope man), Costanzo (chief groaner and curser) and Ilia and I, limped off, exhausted and in agony but feeling proud of ourselves that we had actually achieved something that seemed impossible.
You will all see Bacchus when you come down to the restaurant and now at least you will know what we went through to get him down there!
A big thank you to all of you who have been sending emails of support, the phone calls, the impromptu visits to the restaurant to see how we are getting on, it is all appreciated. We had a visit a couple of days ago from Costanzo’s old friends Celia Imrie and Fidelis Morgan who were playing at the Glasgow Citizens Theatre on Saturday. Sadly we weren’t able to offer them dinner and they had to eat elsewhere but it was lovely to catch up with them and a big thank you to them for the beautiful flowers which are now gracing our window sill! See you both really soon the next time you are in Glasgow.
That is all for now, hope you enjoyed the update and our great news! See you all soon!
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