A foothold in business

Press, 25 January 1986, Page 3

A foothold in business

“Now who’s put his foot in it this time?" Mr Alister Jones ponders. For a minute, he was wondering if yet another worker on the roof of his Blue Lagoon Restaurant at Brooklands had botched up his work. Reassured, he slid down off his stool yesterday to report that the leg was Indeed the plaster cast he had retrieved from a city hospital to “fill a hole” In the roof. He got the idea — a good talking point for customers — after one of his helpers fell through the roof and left the hole. “I told him ‘don’t fall through the ceiling’ and two minutes later there went his foot,” Mr Jones said. “Then I thought, ‘how am I going to fill the hole?’ “A foot came through it so a foot had better go back in it” Mr Jones is confident that he has not put his foot in it by converting an 87-year-old church that he picked up cheaply at Belfast into his new restaurant at the Brooklands Motor Camp. After about $lO,OOO worth of alterations and plenty of his own skilled hours, he estimated the revamped church is now worth thousands of dollars. Much of the interior work is of cedar and oak salvaged from fallen trees in the Oamaru Botanic Gardens. Mr Jones’s friends have given knick-knacks from many countries for his restaurant walls. Just as the restaurant was brewing the pot for its first afternoon tea customers, an intrigued Belfast resident, Mrs Dorothy Arps, arrived, keen to satisfy her curiosity. She remembers vividly how as a child she attended Sunday School in the old Anglican St David’s Church. During her more romantic years she danced on the polished floor of the church, used then as a local hall.

“I have often enjoyed myself in that cnurch, kicking up my heels and having a marvellous time,” Mrs Arps, aged 76, said.

Now that the plaster foot is firmly encased in the restaurant ceiling Mr Jones is busy thinking of ways to make it more appealing.

“During any wedding receptions we will make it available for the bride’s leg garter,” he said.

“An Auckland man has told me it’s wrong having the Canterbury rugby sock on the foot while we don’t have the shield. He is going to lend me an Auckland sock for it at least until we get the shield back.”