Where Worlds Collide

Arriving at work this morning I met a work colleague who’d just stepped off the same train as me. He’d just got a mobile phone call from his boss saying the office was closed because of a fire.

The road outside the station was indeed filled with fire engines, but it turned out that the fire was at the pretentious wine bar next door. Although all the surrounding roads were still closed, including the main A34, the fire brigade allowed us through to our undamaged office. By that time they were damping down the embers, and there was no danger of it spreading to our building. (It’s the building you can see in the background of the photo)

Too early to speculate as to the cause, but the whole upper floor was completely burned out. It’s just four days after the grand opening, and there are mutterings about arson. Which is probably what you’d expect when the owner had recently done jail time for GBH.

Although I’d been in the building a few times under previous management when it was called “Brasingamens”, the refurbished establishment was not the sort of place I’d ever be likely to frequent. It was squarely aimed at the footballer’s wives market, and the only time we’d ever be likely to go there was to laugh at the prices (Eight quid for a glass of wine, so I hear). Perhaps they should rebuild it as a real ale pub with live music every Friday night.

At the moment I have to go all the way to Crewe for that sort of thing.

Update: BBC News is now reporting it as suspected arson. Which is pretty much what we all thought.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 17th, 2008 at 5:54 pm and is filed under Miscellaneous. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.