The Club · Week two

Four accounts, and we can account for all four.

Four accounts exist on the site as of Sunday night. As far as we can tell, every one of them was created by us, while testing something, across two separate sessions this week. That includes one called Jimmy Test, who joined on Friday evening and has not done anything since, and one called James Simpson, created Thursday night, who is, in the interests of honesty, also me.

We are not going to pretend any of the four is a stranger who found the site on their own, because we cannot be confident that any of them are, and the entire point of a newsletter like this one is not pretending otherwise.

Founder memberships are still on 46, same as last week. Nobody has bought the forty-seventh.

Pubs · On the map

One pub on the map, and we put it there ourselves.

The map has one pub on it. It went up on Thursday morning, added by us rather than by a landlord, to check that the sign-up form actually saves a pub when somebody submits it. It does. We used a real pub's real name and address to test it properly, and have not yet asked the actual landlord how they feel about that, which is now urgently higher up the list than it was on Wednesday.

No other pub has signed up under its own steam. That is the honest length of a pub directory in week two: one entry, added by the people who built it, to see if it worked.

Run a pub, or know someone who does? The form is at thesnug-club.co.uk/join-pub. Fifteen minutes, and considerably less awkward than the alternative above.

The Bands · On Discover

Free band pages, taken up by nobody, so far.

Band pages became free last week, on the idea that the ten-pound fee was the only thing standing between a band and a page. Total bands signed up since: zero.

We are not going to spin that. It might mean the fee was never really the problem. It might mean nobody outside this newsletter has heard of us yet, which is the more likely and less flattering explanation, and also the one we are supposed to print.

If you are in a band, the page is free and takes about ten minutes: thesnug-club.co.uk/join-band.

Vinyl Night · Vinyl nights

No vinyl nights were logged through the site this week. None.

Nights are still happening in the usual way, on paper and on vibes, and the people running them have not yet decided the extra thirty seconds per record is worth it. We built the ballot page to be faster than paper, not different from it, and apparently faster is not yet a good enough argument on its own.

The vinyl page currently has a form, some instructions, and no results. That is the honest situation, and also the least interesting sentence in this issue.

The tally sheets are free to print at thesnug-club.co.uk/print/ballot. No app, no login, no reason left not to.

Gigs · On this week

The harpist survived. The jukebox did not behave.

We said we would report back on the harpist booked into a pub with an uncontrollable jukebox, so: she played through it. Somebody fed the jukebox two pounds during the quiet bit in a very well-known aria, for a song the pub has asked us not to name, and she did not stop, slow down, or acknowledge it in any way. Several people said afterwards it was the best gig they had been to all year, which says something about either the gig or the year.

Elsewhere this week: a Thursday residency in Coventry now twelve weeks deep into never once starting on time, and a four-piece in Preston playing an entirely straight-faced set of songs about the weather.

Eleven gigs are listed on the site this week. None of them are the harpist. She has, we are told, had enough of us.

Buy, Swap, Sell · The crate

Three records added, all by us, none for sale.

Three records were added to the site this week, all in about ninety seconds on Friday evening, none of them marked for sale. All three came from the same account as the James Simpson mentioned further up, which is to say, us.

So: buy-swap-sell currently holds three records that are not for sale, added by someone who is not really a customer. If you have records you would genuinely like to move on, list them properly, and we will try not to count our own test data as activity again next week.

Listing takes about two minutes and you set your own price, which the three records above notably do not have: thesnug-club.co.uk/crate.

Quizzes · The quiz

One person did the quiz. We don't know who they are.

One person did the daily quiz this week. They were not logged in, so we do not know who they are, only that on Tuesday they answered a music question correctly and have not been back since.

This is, as far as we can establish, the only thing that happened on the site this week that was not done by us. We are aware that is a low bar. We are choosing to be pleased about it anyway.

Karaoke · Karaoke

The banned ballad came back without an announcement.

An update on the pub that pulled a very famous ballad from the machine a fortnight ago and would not say why: it is back. No announcement. It simply reappeared on Thursday, wedged between two Oasis songs, as if nothing had happened.

We asked why. We were told, and we are quoting directly, that "it had had long enough". We do not know what the song did to earn a fortnight off. We have decided to respect the sentencing.

Elsewhere, a stag do in Newcastle attempted Bohemian Rhapsody with ten singers assigned one line each, which works fine until line six and falls apart entirely by Galileo.

Pub Events · What else pubs did

A pub in Cardiff tried a quiz and a bake sale at once.

A pub in Cardiff combined its weekly quiz with a bake sale, on the theory that people who know their state capitals also buy cake. The cake sold out. The geography round did not go well.

Also this week: a beekeeping talk above a pub in Halifax, eleven attendees, and one actual bee that came in through a window partway through and was, by the end of the evening, treated as a guest of honour rather than a problem.

Merch · The shop

Still not open, and now for two reasons instead of one.

The shop is still not open. Last week's reason was that everything on the page is drawn rather than photographed, because this build runs through a text-only interface with no button for taking a picture of a jumper. That has not changed.

What is new is that we also do not currently have any actual jumpers, in the sense of stock, in the sense of a supplier, which is a separate problem from the drawing one and arguably a bigger one. Both are below the pub count and the log-in page on this week's list, and are staying there for at least one more.

The fourteen items are still on the page, if you would like to look at drawings of things you cannot yet buy.