Monday 29th December 2025

I am off to Aberdeen today. The Blue Lamp, a venue I performed in as a comedian back when I was a student, is closing on the 30th, so I have come to pay my respects. I don't have anyone to look after The Grey One and so he has to come with me. He darts under the bed once the box appears, but I manage to drag him out and dump him in the carrier. The howls of protest commence.
We get to Waverley to discover the train to Aberdeen is running ten minutes late. When we board the train it has been overbooked (privatisation is bad, kids) and someone is in my seat. As I have the cat with me and I booked a table specifically for him I unapologetically kick them out and take my place. Mo is well behaved for the journey.
We get into the hotel at around twenty to six. I deliberately booked The Station Hotel as it is a hop skip and a jump from the station. The room is pleasant, although one of the beds appears to be built on an actual ramp and the bathroom door is disintegrating. It'll do. Mo curls up on one of the beds and goes to sleep. I head out and take a walk to the top of Union Street to see what's changed then head back and head to Slains on Belmont Street. The pub was a favourite of mine back when I lived here as it had an over-the-top gothic decor verging on a tacky haunted house. I loved it. I heard that Stonegate finally got away with giving it a refurb having been blocked a few years ago from turning it into a Slag and Lettuce. I'm keen to see if my worst fears have come true.
They have. Gone is the gothic decor, red pleather seating and carved wooden gargoyles, and in their place is a colour scheme of lemon yellow, cardinal red and cornflower blue. A big selling point of the pub were their cocktail pitchers themed after the seven deadly sins. They're not my kind of drink today, but I was a much more basic beast when I was 19. Gone.
The food can't be any worse than the crushing disappointment I feel for this once characterful building being robbed of anything even close to a personality, so I order a BBQ Mac burger. The pub is quiet. Myself, another woman and a dozen other punters make up the total population, and I seem to be the only one getting food. Why then it takes 25 minutes to rock up I'm not sure. It's okay.
I finish my Tennents (they ripped out the cask lines too) and head out. As I turn the corner onto Little Belmont Street I stop dead in my tracks and my blood turns cold.
The Little Belmont Hut, the greatest take-away on God's green Earth, is dead.
Chips and cheese is the food of choice for drunken students, and I maintain that these were the best. But why? Did they hand cut the chips? Nope. Was the cheese some majestic blend of cheddar, wensleydale and mozzarella? Nope. The trick? They cooked the chips for longer. That's it, and it makes all the difference. Most late night food venues treat chips as something to bash out fast, and so invariably you end up with a lemon yellow anemic slither — or worse — still frozen in the middle. LBH's chips had a home made quality, despite being nothing of the sort. There was nothing better after a night at Exodus (now Pop World) than the golden brown delights of The Little Belmont Hut. And they put green olives on their pizzas instead of the vastly inferior black ones. A great loss to planet Earth.
Once I'm done weeping I head up Union Street to The Stag, and find it packed to the rafters. Not finding a seat, it seems now is the time to correct an oversight of mine in my student days. Tonight is the night I finally step foot in The Grill.
The Grill is another of those misleadingly named public houses in the UK, as it does neither gammon nor burgers. No chicken wings or toast. Not a crumpet to be consumed, nor a plate of sausage and mash. In fact, The Grill doesn't serve food of any variety. Story goes it was a restaurant for thirty years before becoming a pub and in honour of its former status, was named 'The Grill'. I suppose it's the same as taking over an ex-Greggs site and naming it 'Ye Olde Steakey Bakey Armseth'
The Grill became famous in the 1970s for being owned by a sexist piece of shit. There was an incident in 1973 where the then proprietor had a group of women arrested for trying to get served in the pub. They were only allowed inside in 1975 when the law forced the issue. I'm sure someone somewhere will complain that sexism had nothing to do with it. "It's just how things were back then!" they'll cry. History has a wonderful way of trying to forgive objectively shitty behaviour as being "It was the style of the time!". Utter twaddle. Poppy cock. Fiddle sticks.
Today it's known as a must-go whisky drinkers destination in Aberdeen. I wasn't into whisky when I lived here, hence never having been before. I peruse the bar and am pleased to see a healthy cask selection, and opt for a pint of Scapa Special and end up going for a 2001 Glenrothes, which I suspect is a bit oxidized. Christ, I've changed.
I park down on a table close to the door. There is an octogenarian at the table opposite who is muttering to himself. After ten minutes, he goes to get up and farts with unrestrained violence. What a charming locale.
I leave The Grill to go have sex with a man in his man-anus.
Sodomy completed, I waddle off to The Blue Lamp for a night cap. A folk band is playing in the front room and the place is packed. The woman behind the bar looks ready to kill herself.
I park myself at the bar and struggle to get served, before finally getting a Tennents in a warm glass fresh out of the glasswasher. I spot a Connoisseurs Choice Glendullan behind the bar and go to ask for one, but am ignored. I try again but the surly barmaid just slams the card machine down in front of me and walks off. Charming.
The bar is in disarray, with the post mix long since gone and in its place are bottles of Barr's Cola and Schweppes soda water. The fridges are similarly bare but for a few bottles of Corona and cans of Inch's cider. I over hear snippets of conversation — a Canadian woman who worked here 15 years ago and enjoyed her time here, and a woman with a wonderful bob cut describing the closure as "a shame."
The folk band wrap up with a toast to Sandy Brown, the former owner who inherited the pub from his dad, and who died back in 2020. His grandson took the place over. Clearly it's not gone well.
The toast ignites riotous cheers and applause for the dearly departed landlord, and the barmaid looks ready to end herself. Miserable bitch. I return to the hotel, fuss the cat, and go to bed.