Unless you want your wine bar to look like a brothel, purple curtains are a no-no apparently To the whimsically Arthurian-named town of Lostwithiel in Cornwall, England, where the owner of a wine bar has found himself defending his biz in the local media against claims that it looks more like a bordello. And what, pray, is the offending characteristic attracting these claims? Streams of shifty, shame-drenched men …
Congratulations on how the guy is dealing with the issue : openly, honestly and calmly.
It is high time the rabid prudes step down a notch and let other people live their lives. Purple is not the colour of prostitution either - it seems to me that it is seen every Easter in Christian churches and catholic cardinals have been seen wearing that color - so zip it, prudes, you're just revealing your shameful desires as usual.
Purple used to be the most difficult, and therefore the most expensive
Aye - made from the shells of the Murex shellfish found along the Mediterranean coastline. I takes a *lot* of shells (and some fairly nasty processes) to make the dye.
Which is why royalty from the Phoenician kings onwards (and up to the current day, even though artificial purple dyes have been available for centuries) use purple as their signature colours (and wearing an all-purple[1] robe/toga in the days of the Roman Empire was effectively a short-cut to a quick flight off the Tarpean Rock[2] unless you happened to have enough[3] legions to back you up).
Here endeth the (slightly expanded) history lesson.
[1] Senators has a purple stripe along the border of their tunics and togas to signify their status.
[2] The standard means of execution for traitors until they started to get more creative..
[3] Or, in some cases, just the Praetorian legion would do.
> Senators has a purple stripe along the border of their tunics and togas to signify their status.
From my reading of Asterix as a kid, the thing I learned was that purple hem was most likely an after effect of Roman senators drunken wine spillage, then walking through it later on.
It is indeed true that the Red Lantern has been used since time immemorial as the "open for business" sign of one of the oldest professions in the world. Although innkeepers nowadays tend to prefer a simple lighted sign professing whatever the local brew is on tap.
The Ladies of Negotiable Affection , still use the original "lantern", although it's really not that long ago when the main operating theatre for those ladies was local inns.
"It is indeed true that the Red Lantern has been used since time immemorial..."
It had been my understanding that the red lamp dated from the First World War, when a house would put out a red light if they served enlisted ranks, and a blue one if they catered to the officer class.
"[...] nephew-son?"
Nice use of English nuances. Surprisingly that term was apparently first recognised in 2011 but with a different meaning than is probably intended here.
"illegitimate goings-on, looking like a brothel or a funeral parlour"
Illegitimate goings on in a funeral parlour? Damn, I need to get out more often...
I dont know why but I suddenly have the Doug Anthony All Stars playing in my head.... "Necrophilia, Necrophilia, Rigour Mortis makes me hard..."
Purple curtains in a brothel?
Lostwithiel isn't in the diocese of the Bishop of Bath and Wells, but maybe he goes on holiday there?
https://blackadder.fandom.com/wiki/Bishop_of_Bath_and_Wells
"illegitimate goings-on, looking like a brothel or a funeral parlour"
Opportunity knocks for someone to combine the two?
"Get someone dead into your bed, get into necrophilia now"
Who sung that folk-song?
But why restrict yourselves to indoor shenanigans?
I heard the minx remark,
She’d meet him after dark,
Inside St. James’s Park,
And give him one!
And then all down to Penzance:
Alas! there’s not one maiden breast
Which seems to feel the moral beauty
Of making worldly interest
Subordinate to sense of duty!
But of course. For one of the most disadvantaged and under-invested parts of the EU it received a large amount of EU grant, grudgingly matched or contributed to by central government. For example, the A30 would not have been made dual carriageway most of its route and lots of communities would not have Internet without the EU grants; The UK government wasn't going to invest in the area. Then there's the hatred of anyone from outside the country, despite holidaymakers (emmets) being a major contributory income in the county other than looking after old people and the support structures that this requires and agriculture. Seasonal farm work requires transitory workers, which are rarely local workers because many of them have left for full time work out of the county and would like to be paid more than near-nothing wages for often very poor conditions of work. As for the disgust about city folk buying up the property... the fact that the locals could have chosen to sell their properties to locals instead is entirely lost on them.
Nice place to visit though, but mostly shut off peak and crammed full at peak times.
> "but then at the weekend a letter came through the door signed from 'me' that said the curtains gave the image of a house of ill-repute"
Maybe the author was writing a complaint. That the w(h)ine bar wasn't living up to "what it said on the tin". One imagines there isn't much else going on in Lostwithiel
No that One currently resides somewhere in Washington D.C. and, is currently obsessed with farting cows. One, wonders by how much is she contributing to the problems of global warming by, simply opeinig her piehole up to spew this nonsence..
But, it is good to see her own Party actually turn on her, and do their damndest to under cut her, if only to save themselves.
"We made the decision not to alter the curtains to go with the opinion of the majority"
Good on him, and the entirely appropriate response to the time-rich, scared little NIMBY busybodies who think the credence of their own opinion trumps everyone else. I think my response would have been in the same ballpark as his, but unfortunately much less measured.
A wine shop down the road from us opened (which was good) and then applied for a variation in license so they could do wine tasting in the evening (also very good). As part of the licence application you're required to list all the hours during which you can accept orders for alcohol. They have a website, so it was "24 hours via the website".
It didn't take long before some of the thicker (older, bored, europhobic, borderline-hysterical) local residents were up in arms at the prospect of the 24hr nightclub opening in the 200sq.ft premises: "it's the thin end of the wedge I tell you". The bemused counciller who arrived at their frantic behest quite literally took one look at this veritable gateway to hell before approving the license.
Which all sounds very funny. But a letter writing campaign from people that can write faster than they can think isn't much fun if it's your business on the end of it. So I wish you luck, Mr Gilbert, with your judgemental neighbours. Sadly our shop closed, not because the neighbours continued their campaign of harrassment (they did) but because the owner turned out to be a bit of a wanker. And now I have to buy my wine somewhere other than next door. So no-one comes out of this happy.
"[Cornwall Live] is probably more credable, then the MSM."
Assuming MSM is mainstream media, Cornwall Live is part of the MSM.
Sadly, this is what British (English and Welsh?] regional media generally look like these days, not just in Cornwall.
Cornwall Live is part of Reach plc, which used to be Trinity Mirror, which in recent years has acquired a variety of UK regional and local papers and associted websites, before generally wrecking them (much as happened with the corporatisation of independent local radio in the UK, which is now mostly not-independent and not-local but does have plenty of stations with the same few corporate owners).
https://www.reachplc.com/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Reach_plc_titles
My goodness - there really are some small-minded folk out there if they have nothing else better to do than complain, via anonymous letters, about a wine bra (oops, Freudian typo!).......BAR curtains. Well......really! They should stand up and be counted if it's THAT much a of a concern. I would probably bar them on sight.
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