... the restaurant/bar I've been frequenting for nigh unto three decades has suddenly, with no warning to staff or regulars, closed for good. It's an amazing feeling of loss - while I understand how someone can go out of business, I simply cannot believe that we weren't given the chance to say goodbye. I would have been there last Saturday if I'd known they would never open again...

I've been calling people (what I do when there is news, besides posting here), and grown men have had to sit down when given this news. People are in tears. I have actually had to join facebook (I know, not a decision to be taken in grief) to get into the group commiserating about its demise...

I am kind of planning a vigil of sorts, outside its doors tomorrow night when we would have been eating wings there... I think I'll take a teddy bear and some flowers and make a sign. A long-standing local tradition done in by, I think, the rent issue.

*Sigh.*

I'm also rewriting Wasn't That A Pity And A Shame to sing the vigil. Other good goodbye songs or laments for the passing of time?

It's not the closing of St. Maarten's that griiiiiiiieves me
But my darling when I think of wings...