Mark Daniels: Coins of the Realm - how do I get hold of some?

I always say that I take the quiet nights as readily as I take the busy nights - just as long as the busy ones outweigh the quiet ones! The quiet ones can be when you get a chance to relax but, sometimes, the busy ones can be a royal pain in the butt, especially if you suddenly find yourself with a bit of a change crisis.

Take last weekend, for example. It was a stunningly successful weekend, a culmination of a variety of events we had going on over the three days, and Saturday ranked in our top-three days of best performance since Ali and I took over the pub - with Saturday night itself being simply amazing.

We hosted a leaving do for one of our regulars, who is changing jobs. His old co-workers descended on us and proceeded to mob the bar, using nightclub guerrilla-style ordering techniques. You know: as soon as you catch their eye they start hurling their order at you, ignorant of the fact that other people were waiting before them. And then they use a twenty pound note to pay for a £1.99 pint.

That's okay the first time round, but six drinks later and they're still paying with twenty pound notes, and they've got all your pound coins in their pocket. Then they complain that you haven't got any change left in the till and are having to reimburse them with fifty pence pieces.

It's a big bug-bear of mine, the fact that customers refuse to pay for their next drink with the change you gave them from the last, but it's not as frustrating as trying to get change out of the banks these days.

My wife has spent the best part of this morning phoning the local banks and the post office in an attempt to get change before the Morris Men arrive this evening. It's a nightmare.

Our business bank account is with the Bank of Scotland, who don't have a branch near us so 'sold' the account to us on the premise that we can use the local Halifax branch (who our personal accounts are with) in order to do our banking services, and to get change from them. This was absolutely fine up to the point where HBOS collapsed into the arms of Lloyds-TSB, and now the local branch manager refuses to give us change. "I'm not allowed to hold that level of cash on site."

But you're a bank! Aren't banks supposed to hold money? We can't even order it in advance as they aren't, apparently, allowed to order change in any more.

We've tried ordering from Lloyds, who don't appear to be interested as we're not actually their customer, and Barclays will help but only if we pay a 1.65% charge and wait a week for the cash to be available. The Post Office can do it, but only if we are an Alliance & Leicester Business Banking customer.

Despite having the notes with which to trade for coinage, I'm beginning to feel like walking up and down the high street begging for loose change. I'd probably do better if I started selling the Big Issue.

So on this particular occasion, I'm asking for help: does anybody have any suggestions, tricks or tips that I can use to get banks to change up some money for me these days? I did put an ad in our local village newsletter for loose change, but seven-year-old Molly's piggy bank only seems to contain an awful lot of twopenny pieces.

My only other option is to change business bank accounts - and we know how the beleaguered banking service feels about pubs and small businesses these days...

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Any Port in a Storm

Reading through the comments on my last blog about moving on from the smoking ban, I was preparing to write a piece shouting "enough already". And then I heard about SOPAC, which launched yesterday.

Last week I received a very polite invitation to take part in the Save Our Pubs And Clubs (SOPAC) campaign launch from Simon Clark, Director of Forest, which unfortunately I had to decline due to other commitments. SOPAC appear, on the surface, to have done exactly what the pro-smoking campaigners need to have done: got a famous face and put forward a potentially media-friendly campaign.

Antony Worrall Thompson might not be a pretty picture - to quote Pete Robinson he "ain't exactly Joanna Lumley but any port in a storm" - but he's a name the public recognise and a high profile individual whose business has been affected by the smoking ban.

I said that if the pro-smoking campaigners couldn't put forward the sort of media profile that Fair Pint have done for the beer tie issues, then it truly is time to move on. I still stand by that - I don't agree with the ban as it stands and would welcome amendments to it (that, I have never denied) but do feel it is time to let the subject rest so that we can get on with other things - but if SOPAC can have an impact that may well bring about a change in the law to allow flexibility, then I wish them the best of luck and support them whole-heartedly.