Dundee again - will history repeat itself?

I’m off on a business trip tomorrow morning, it’s not the most exciting of locations, so it’s probably just as well that there will be very little free time, but the timing of the trip itself, hasn’t exactly come at the most convenient moment. More about that later, but to put you in the picture, the trip is a repeat of the one I made with our Sales Manager, three years ago which, if you’ve been paying attention, was around the time when Covid-19, and its connection with the Chinese city of Wuhan first began making the headlines, and just a couple of months before the start of the UK going into its first lock-down.?

So, as long as history doesn’t repeat itself, my colleague and I will be flying from Gatwick, to Edinburgh, tomorrow lunchtime, picking up a hire car, and then driving on to Dundee. There we will be giving a presentation to sales representatives, from our largest UK customer. The latter is a company based in Dundee, and seeing as our 2020 pitch was well received, we have been asked to repeat it, three years down the line. The presentation will take place on Tuesday, in the same hotel overlooking the River Tay, as last time, and will conclude with an evening dinner, with a fancy dress theme. The latter isn’t really my scene, but it went well last time, with both the food and the company of a high standard, so what’s not to like?

Nothing really, but with us flying back home on Wednesday, that’s my entire working week taken up. As I said earlier, the timing could have been better, as I’ve a busy and quite schedule of work ahead of me. I shall probably have to go in today (Sunday), primarily to sort out paperwork and permits, for some contractors who are due on site tomorrow, although the alternative plan would be to go in first thing Monday, before traveling to Gatwick. In many respects I would prefer to be at home for Mrs PBT’s, due to the recent and unexpected loss of someone close to her. I won’t go into details now, as unfortunately, these things are part of life, especially as one get older, but this recent passing occurred two years to the day that my father passed away, so it has brought back a few painful memories for me as well.

The return flight to Edinburgh, will represent my first time on an aircraft since before the pandemic, and in fact that previous occasion was the same return Easy Jet flights to the Scottish capital. If I was geeky enough to look them up, they’ve probably got the same flight numbers, but I’m not that sad, yet! Will we get to see much of Dundee, I hear you ask? Possibly slightly more than last time, as the hotel we are staying at on Monday and Tuesday, (not the one where the presentation is taking place), is right in the centre of Dundee.

I’ve carried out a spot of research, and there is a bar listed on CAMRA’s inventory of pubs with an historic interior of national importance, and whilst it’s only 16 minutes’ walk from our hotel, I’m not sure how my colleague will feel about me dragging him to a bar at the bottom of a four-story tenement block. I will try my best to convince him that his life will be forever incomplete, if he doesn’t set foot in the Speedwell Bar, in Perth Road, described by What Pub as “One of the finest examples of an Edwardian pub interior, in the country.”

I’m presuming they mean Scotland, rather than the UK as a whole, but the Speedwell certainly looks interesting. Lunchtime meals only – do toasties count as a meal? but if I can persuade my colleague, it might be the case of a quick pint, and then somewhere nearer the hotel for our evening meal, but that will be my only chance for a decent pint, unless we call in, like last time, at the Brew Dog Bar, at Edinburgh airport, for a cheeky, pre-flight drink. (Full report if I make it to the Speedwell.)