San Stefanos Online ~ North West Corfu

I tried, but I didn't have a wide-screen lens with me...

Jim, go down to the Marina and try the Minerva, just reopened. Good ales and food!

Gav - have known it for 40 years. It's even in a TV play I wrote. I think they used the facility money from the BBC to do it up a bit!

Link here: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0100642/

Right! Two of the pubs down the avenue have seriously reduced the amount of tables and chairs. This is probably (what do I know?) because they want the maximum weekend night packed in crowd of boozers tanking up before they go clubbing. They can keep it.

You'll know far better than we do, but I think the entire demographic is changing. Down Princes Avenue (30 yards away!) the population of the wine-bars changes over the day and over the week. In the week, lunch is a quiet and calm event - lots of young mums with prams, some geriatrics like me, quiet modern jazz playing, crosswords being done and so on. Weekend nights - total mayhem: hundreds of people parachuting in from the estates to the north of the city; tube-tops and mini-skirts; huge crush at the bar; impossible to hear the quiet jazz. I love the way Pave and the avenue change like the weather.

Last night went into Ray's Place (Nepalese - 45 yards away) and ordered some take-away. 30 minutes to kill, so I thought I'd have a drink. Impossible to get into the first three wine bars for the sheer number of people. Made the huge 75 yards walk to Pave. Totally crowded, but being a regular has its merits, and I got a glass of wine passed over the bar in seconds. The nine feet tall black girl next to me was impressed. Not quite impressed enough, but there you go.

I think we're watching an evolutionary process. People want some semblance of class, not spit and sawdust, even if they overwhelm it from time to time. Many pubs have just not learned to adapt.

One of the bad side-effects of the general smoking ban in Europe is, for me, the fact that Paris no longer smells like Paris. It used to smell of warm bread, beer and Gaulloise. Those aromas hung around the Metro and the vents in the street. Rich, exciting, full of atmosphere. Now if Paris smells of anything it's cat poo. Thus does the urge for us to live in an aseptic, sterilised, neutralised environment rob of us so much diversity. 

Thanks, lllly. I think you summed that up perfectly. But I also agree with debra - enough is enough. I've probably said more than I would wish to have said, and will say little more on this topic.

As I'm a mere five feet six inches tall and elderly I am a deceptively easy target for bullies. What they don't realise is that I spent 27 years in a Japanese Dojo learning advanced ninja skills and several years in the SAS. Well - maybe not. But I have similar abilities, as all small boys wearing glasses have to develop if they are to survive. So don't pick on me!

If I am sitting smoking at an outside table and somebody comes and sits next me and then starts moaning I will suggest that they relocate.

In a crowded place unless lots of nearby people are smoking I will not smoke.

I always try to sit as far away from others as to make the potential density of any smoke negligible to zero.

I will not smoke while my neighbours are eating. I will always attempt to sit at the downwind end of the area.

That strikes me as a reasonable, civilised, and sensitive approach. Crushing other people's property does not.

I gave up smoking for four years and during that time never once complained about people smoking - in fact I found it strangely warming. Militant ex-smokers are, in my opinion, hypocritical triumphalists.

Since the Stalinist removal of freedom for bars to decide whether or not to permit smoking I have met some really great people as we sit outside under space heaters. Smoking is not always anti-social.

Have you actually got any legs? Had it ever crossed your tiny mind that you could move?

Yeah - I'll have a pint of Brakspeare, please.