Well, it had to happen eventually, and fuck knows I’ve been threatening it for long enough. This month marks the last of the regular monthly features, and possibly the beginning of the end of the whole sorry Burglar’s Dog pantomime itself.

The Dog can no longer be seen as the definitive oracle on Newcastle's pubs and bars. Aye, like it ever was.

There are two reasons for this:

First of all, this summer I’ve hit the terrible age of 40, the point at which I’d always planned to knock this shit on the head. Anyone who’s had the patience to stick with the Dog over the years will know that I’ve been going to kill this every month for as long as I can remember, as the weakness of some (OK, all) of the regular features will attest. I’ve been doing this crap for eight years, eight bastard years of pummelling away at the keyboard through countless thumping hangovers, and now I’m stepping back for a while, or maybe for good, to stop myself from becoming the sort of flatulent embarrassment I’ve always despised.

There’s no real reason why it has to be 40 – I’ll be the same miserable sack of rancid dogshit in my forties as I was when I was thirty-odd – but if I don’t do it now, then when will I? Fifty? Sixty? 85 and dribbling over some office prick-tease in Sgt Peppers? Screw that. Simply put, I’ve had it up to here with the whole fucking thing. I’ve had enough. Enough of the heartache, enough of the landlords whining, enough of cobbling together endless rants about indistinguishable hostelries, when a slump of the shoulders, a defeated sigh and a twisty-mouthed “Shite” could sum them up far better. The tanks have been siphoned dry, and there’s not a single topic or theme that could fill them up again.

On top of that, I'm now seeing a new counsellor. I don’t know why they've changed: the last one seemed like a canny lad, for the first few years at any rate. I thought we were finally starting to get somewhere, but it would appear that the twat thought otherwise and has scarpered into the sunset. I’ve tried asking them down at the practice where he’s gone but, y’know, the Data Protection Act being the last refuge of the workshy - as any fucking call centre operative will prove – they refuse to fill me in. Hardly seems fair, like: I tell them everything and they tell me nowt.

Anyway, there’s this other geezer trying to sort out my mental problems now, and while it’s early days and the trust isn’t quite there yet – and won’t be until he stops eyeing up me baals – I’m prepared to give his blather a try. The gist of his patter is this: while writing stuff down and posting it on the internet probably helped initially, he reckons that I’m now actively hunting out the rotten things in life – shitty theme pubs and spam stroking luxebars, mainly – and making myself even more depressed in the process. His idea is that I should stop looking for stuff that I know will make me angry. I don’t know about that, mind. But, to keep the stupid, buck-toothed nonce happy, I’ll give it a whirl. Of course, if I’d acquiesced in the first place and took up the offer of the relaxing whale-song CDs or the prescription sunshine-in-a-bottle, none of this bloody nonsense would ever have hit the web, and I’d be a mildly contented zombie like the rest of the fucking morons I suffer in my daily life. You live and learn.

Two reasons, then. A and B. But mostly A. I'm too long in the tooth to be bothered with this fucking nonsense any longer. Nothing seems to put the fire in the belly like it used to.

The effects of the credit crunch on the drinking scene? Not interested.

Happy Hours might be coming to an end? Yeah, so?

The Dog & Codger will reopen next week as Bar Tittyfun? Couldn’t give a fuck.

Maybe, as I line myself up for an eternity in front of the telly watching property shows, it’s time to sum up what has been achieved since this Dog carry-on started. What have I learnt? That it’s all been a tortuous – and very expensive – waste of time, that’s what. When I tot up the damage done and the money shelled out, I’m starting to think that a nice, honest heroin habit would have been far less trouble. And while, aye, fair enough, a few grumpy bar owners might have taken the odd hump, it was certainly not enough to make them mend their ways. It’s been like trying to train a brain-damaged puppy: every night you whack them on the muzzle with a rolled up Chronicle, and every morning they’re back on the fucking settee. Get DOWN, you stupid little sod.

What now? Firstly, I’ll be keeping the site up as an archive, and as a guide for anyone who thinks it might be a good idea to travel to the (once, a long time ago) thriving party scene of Newcastle upon Tyne. Very little really changes around here, and when it does it's normally just get the same fucking crap with a sprinkle of glitter on the top and an extra three quid on the drinks bill. Honestly, there are reviews on here that were written back in the year 2000, and there’s not a man alive who would know they weren’t box-fresh unless I pointed them out.

Secondly – and only if I can face it – I’ll still be chipping in with the odd review whenever a new bar opens, purely to practice writing in sentences. I’ve spent far too long finding new and linguistically fascinating ways of disappearing up my own arsehole to chuck it all in and regress into forum-posting txt msg spk now. Seeing hundreds of years of language development reduced to THAT in a Gateshead generation makes me angrier than a thousand chain-pubs ever could. Standards must be upheld.

I’ll also be slotting all the dead bars into the RIP file. To be honest, I’d be happy if the whole fucking lot of them – barring half a dozen – ended up there. And I’m sure I’ll find some way to disable the Pub of the Month thing eventually. But the features end now. I just don’t care any more. Not that I ever did much, really, but now I genuinely couldn’t give a splattery shit.

As for the old reviews? I’m sure I can find the time to stick on the odd paragraph here and there if I notice any major changes or owt like that. But for the quibbles over furniture placement and the tuppence-ha’penny refits, you’re on your own. There’s an optimum number of times any sane man can go into a bar called the Quilted Camel, and that number is zero.

For a while it’ll be business as usual here. After that it’s caveat emptor, as some big-nosed Roman bastard apparently once said. But I’m sure I’ll be popping back into the office now and then, to bore the living fuck out of the poor swine who thought they’d got shot of me. I’m positive I’ll find a way to spout my increasingly irrelevant opinions, obliviously drifting ever further from the point. And I’m certain that, like all early retirees, I’ll drop down dead any minute soon, keeling over with a sense of numb disappointment that my dotage evaporated like (snaps fingers) that. Yes, I’m quite looking forward to that, I think.

Call this gardening leave or a move upstairs, Director of Football-style. Call it sheer bloody laziness. Call it what you like: I’m really past caring. But I’ve got to get some distance. Consumed as I am with self-hatred, self-pity and a right bad back, I don’t want to spend any more of my life drinking shitty beer in shittier bars. And I certainly don’t want to end up as some sort of painfully-jovial pissflap who refers to his fucking spare room as "Burglar’s Dog Towers".

Obviously I won’t be forsaking the pub completely: it’s just the real goppers I’ll have to think twice about visiting. I’m sure I'll often be slumped in the corner of some fucking hipster bar pretending I still give a frig about music, film, art, love, anything at all that doesn't come with a 10% off sticker from Homebase DIY. But the watchful, jaundiced eye is glazing over, and the mental notepad will remain blank. I’m too old to care, and that’s all there is to it. You know what was the defining moment that made me realise it was time to step aside? When someone asked me to explain the difference between Shakira and Enter Shikari, and I couldn’t. Fucking hell, man. One day, my son, this will all be yours.

Finally, there’ll be no JK Rowling-style tears as I squeeze the last drop of lifeblood out of the misshapen, cantankerous mutt. I’ll be glad to see the back of the fucking thing, to be honest. I’m a now free man, you hear me? A free man.

Goodbye cruel world.

Mind you, I’ll probably change my mind next month.

Gracias por su visita.

The Burglar's Dog

PS Feel free to call me a cunt using the Contact button above.