The Circus is in town.

I feel like one of those plate spinners at the moment, with four or five plates spinning on a pole, and trying to keep up with them all and making sure that I dont drop one. My first day back after five days off, and you spend the first hour or so catching up with the gossip, whats happened, any problems, any wines missing, have all the orders come in, are my new wines in yet etc etc. With it being Chester Races, the afternoon wasnt anticipated to be busy, although the Library was full. Now Ive only got two more days and Im off for nine days in total. But Ive got a ton of stuff still to do. The Brasserie wine list has been tasted and the new wines agreed. Ive costed them out and priced up the new wines. Now we need to confirm availability with the suppliers, vintages and try to manouvre the price down on those wines we want to offer by the glass.

Wine-list 3.0 has now evolved into 3.2, and is ready for the next approval, checking and proof-reading. We've tweaked the colouring a bit, added some underlining to highlight the headers and just made a few more cosmetic changes. Ive still got about twelve wines that havent made an appearance yet, so they need to be chased, and if neccessary re-ordered from alternative suppliers. Ive also been given £5000 to spend. £2500 on old claret and £2500 on other wines of my choice. The catch is the clarets need to be on Ross's desk for signature by the 31st (middle of my holiday) and the other £2500 gets signed off in a one-er too. So Im in the middle of trawling through broking lists and compiling my wish-list of one-off wines that will add a bit of fun to the list.

The cellar is a mess, and although technically that isnt really my responsability to sort out, I feel compelled to do it. Ultimately it is my cellar, so I need to be the guide when it gets organised so that when I take people on a cellar tour I know where stuff is. Thats the bugger of it, it's going to take a few days of concentrated effort to lick the place into shape, and I suspect that I'm going to have to draft in some help for that too. Well you cant have an omelette without breaking a few eggs.

On the subject of messes, the office is getting a bit dishevelled at the moment. The real pisser is that Ive been off for a week, and although Im the first to admit it wasnt sparkling clean when I left it was a hell of a lot better than it is now. I know Im gonnae get the blame for it being a dump as well, so Im gonna have tae clean her up on Sunday after we've finished the stocktake.

And Joy of Joys weve got our monthly chore of Stocktake to do on Sunday. This is going to be Mike's first solo stocktake, although he's going to have Will there as well. Im quite apprehensive about this one as theres been a lot of transition down there, and I got a bad feeling about the impending result. Of course that impacts where it really hurts - my paycheck.

So the plates are spinning, and I'd better get going and keep my eye on them.