I’ve previously mentioned the final night of Redmonds before lockdown shut it down. Well, under Scotland’s slightly more cautious easing of lockdown, it finally re-opened on Friday. However, I decided to be safer, and visit my Mum before I visited it, and so I finally got my first pint at a pub since the end of March today. So, what was it like?

The first notable thing was how much has not changed since before the lockdown. It’s still table service only, only a limited amount of people at a table, you can’t move between tables, and payment by contactless.

The first major difference I encountered today is that you have to wait to be seated, and the first thing you get is a dollop of hand-gel, then a pencil, a piece of printed paper and an “ENGAGED” sign.

The hand-gel is self explanatory. The pencil and printed paper are for track-and-trace. You put your contact details on the piece of paper, and they store it in a folder for the day, and then it gets stored away in a safe at the end of the night. The thinking behind this is that if there’s a COVID outbreak from the pub, investigators can look at the info in the safe for tracking and tracing purposes. The info is stored in paper format for privacy concerns, and gets destroyed after a month anyway.

The “ENGAGED” sign has to do with the change in role of the toilets. They’re now gender-neutral, and which toilet you go to depends on which half of the bar you are in. One one person can go in the toilet at a time, hence the “ENGAGED” sign, which you hang on a hook on the toilet door. (Of course, try not to forget to take it off when you leave!)

Other than that, it’s relatively similar to the way it was before lockdown. There can only be so many people in the place due to social distancing, so I saw people turned away because the place was too full, and if it does get busy like that, the maximum time you can stay there is 2 hours.

The other major difference was that all of the staff were wearing masks. To be honest, I was also wearing a mask too when I wasn’t at my table. Another difference was that there were large sheets of clear perspex guarding the bar area.

So, it’s not that much different to before. We’ll see how long this state of affairs lasts.