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Monochrome Monday

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The Tiger Inn, nestling in a valley on the South Downs is the latest casualty of the financial crisis sweeping through Englands rural pubs. It closed last month after three centuries of serving the community. I took this picture last year in happier times.

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Click on pic to enlarge. To see more contributions to Monochrome Monday click HERE

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Wotta Lotta Jobs!

Once upon a time you left school, got a job, worked for 50 years, got your gold watch and put your feet up! But that was not for me! Never the academic type. So at the first opportunity I left school andI trotted off down my local High Street in search of something to do.

I went shop to shop until I found myself in the Home & Colonial Stores, purveyors of all things grocery!

There I was guided in the art of cutting, weighing, wrapping and being a jolly nice young man.

The manager Roy was your typical cartoon grocer. Portly and tall, with chubby shiny cheeks and a permanent grin as if he knew something I didn't.He strutted around the shop in his white jacket and blue striped apron. His adoring wife Glad worked with us - a smaller yet equally round version of her doting husband. Roy taught me how to turn a half pig into neat piles of bacon rashers and perfectly formed gammon joints. I turned sheets of blue paper into sugar bags and became expert at removing the wax and cloth from half hundredweight wheels of smelly cheddar.

There I became skilled in adding up our customers' weekly shopping bills in my head - this was before tills did it for you, and we still had 12 pence to the shilling and 20 shillings to the pound!.

.About that time the mighty supermarket was beginning to appear . Key Stores opened a new fangled store in the town and I got itchy feet.

I had long been in awe of the commercial traveller from Spillers Flour who came to our shop each month. Him with the sharp John Colliers suit, the leather brief case and a company Ford Cortina in the latest shade of pale blue.

That's for me I thought. I'm going to be a salesman!

Soon after that I found myself in London. The sleepy market town of my childhood was now a million miles away. Eighteen years old on what might just have well been another planet.

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It was the sixties. Up there people were 'swingin' - 'til now the only swingin' I'd done was on the see-saw down the local reck!

Anyway I had successfully applied to become a trainee Sales Executive for Lamson Paragon. I was to sell all sorts of business forms and printed office stationary. What were actually selling was paper - forests of it. It was just that printing on it made the task somewhat easier.

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On my first day I was one of twenty or so raw recruits from all over the UK some of which were to remain my friends to this day. The MD met us all one to one. He was a slight man in a pin-striped suit and and had a few strands of Brylcreamed hair swept across his bald head. He had a screwed up face and an unfortunate speech impediment very reminiscent of the Godfather. He introduced himself as 'ECMB'. .

After an initial chat, a skinny bloke in a shabby and very baggy two piece, shiny at the knees and elbows, appeared . 'Thish ish Hughey Holmesh' said ECMB. ' He will be your friend, guide and mentor' And so he was. Within three months there wasn't a pub in North London I hadn't visited nor a blousy barmaid I hadn't been introduced to!

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We did hardly any work at all! This is the life I thought. Anyway, armed with my samples, a standard issue brief case, and unlimited tube fares I plied my trade from Euston to Hampstead and all points in between. I originally stayed with friends-of-friends but it wasn't long before I had my own bedsit behind Finchley Road tube station.

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Things went well and in no time I became a product specialist. This involved helping the territory reps flog my Paragon cash registers! They used reams of multi-layered paper, one copy as a receipt for the customer and the and the other copies disappeared into a locked compartment where they couldn't be tampered with.

My training manager for this most impressive devise was one TIK Fashom. A dapper little man from Hove. 'That copy is as safe as a letter in a letter box' he would bellow. 'What is it lad?' 'Safe as a letter in a letter box' I'd whisper.

By then things were going really well. I moved into a flat in a leafy North London suburb with three fellow Paragonites and together we moonlighted with a mobile disco. This was long before they were popular and we found ourselves in enormous demand playing at parties from Golders Green to Shoreham.

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And then, by some kwirk of fate we all managed to get transferred to the Crawley office at the same time. We took on a huge house to share in rural West Susex.

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Soon after we all went our separate ways. New jobs , new wives! But we are still friends to this day. .

When I told ECMB I was going to sell Miele domestic appliances it was as if I was becoming a drop out from the noble art of selling. 'White goodsh?' he roared. 'Washing machinesh?'.

His face reddened. 'Conshumer durablesh?'

I picked up my new company car from a VW dealer in St Johns Wood opposite Lords cricket ground. LUC 949 K . That's a bit of luck I thought! Good omen. And it was.It was a fantastic job.

As well as the normal job of looking after my retailers I also had the enviable task of taking a selected few to Germany three times a year to visit the factories. Well, someone had to do it. At least, that was the official reason. It was, of course one long round of beer kellars, clubs and sightseeing. I had a company expense account and was king of the castle for five days at a time!

I was however involved in one alarming incident when a customer failed to appear for breakfast one morning. After banging on his door without success we eventually broke into his room to find him dead on the loo. The whole experience was evidently too much for him.

One year the IRA decided to blow up the Ideal Home Exhibition when I was working on our stand. I emerged unscathed but I shall never ever forget the scenes I witnessed that day.

Like many young men I was passionate about cars, so I decided on a change of direction and ended up flogging new cars from a showroom in the Ashdown Forest. My interest in Citroen in particular, led to me becoming Sales Manager for that particular marque. My boss, Tom, suggested that such was my passion for that quirky product that I must have had LHM fluid flowing through my veins! (for the uninitiated, that's the stuff that Citroen use in their unique suspension system - end of lesson!)

After a while I changed direction again. All that I learned with Ray and Glad kept niggling away at me. I missed the sides of bacon and the Somerset cheddar.

Grocers shops had gone, but now there was a new kid on the block. The delicatessen had arrived and I wanted some of the action!

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I got myself a run-down convenience store by the seaside, and wallah! - The Deli opened it's doors to an unsuspecting public!

They queued and they queued!

They wanted my regional cheeses and my home baked ham. They came for my green back and my fresh bread. I even got my own label wine.

But it was too small. I didn't have room for an assistant. The queue went out of sight some days, but I simply couldn't work fast enough to take the money people wanted to spend. So I gave up.

About that time I came back in contact with one of my Paragon colleagues. Not one of the famous three but someone I'd got to know quite well. When I went to sell kitchen appliances, he had joined Neff to sell built in cookers and the like. We decided we'd sell fitted kitchens together.

Not any old kitchens. Flat packs weren't for us. We decided to go to the top of the market with rigid built to order jobs from Poggenphol and Cuisine Schmitt.

We got a showroom in a prestigious part of Eastbourne and launched the most up - market display in the area. And it worked.

Our kitchens cost four times as much as your average MFI job, but people clamored for them. We were making money - real money. But unfortunately it didn't last, for reasons I'll keep to myself, and we went our separate ways never to meet again.

For a while I worked as UK sales agent for a range of up - market French kitchens, establishing outlets in the South East of England. But it wasn't the same as running our own business and the novelty soon wore off.

So the motor trade beckoned once again, and I joined a company near Hastings as Sales Manager for their Citroen outlets. Westfield it was called. It was run by the Over family. Mr Over was officially retired but enjoyed running all over the country doing dealer swaps. The Matriarch, Mrs Over, made occasional royal visits and we all stood and doffed our caps!

My immediate boss was young son Eric. The rest of the operation was steered by two other brothers. Most of the family lived in large houses all in the same road in posh Cooden. Mini Southforks!

Then I had a real chance to move up the ladder. Citroen UK wanted a Fleet Sales Manager to be based in their dealership back in Hampshire. It was a huge company on a 9 acre site with 5 new car franchises.

That went well and from fleet sales I moved to Retail Sales Manager and it was good - very good!

But I wanted to go back to the South Coast so I landed myself a management position with a Citroen dealer back in Sussex .

Then it happened! I suddenly had an overwhelming desire to become a chef! I'd had no training or experience although I suppose there was a tentative link with my grocery days. Up to then my only experience of cooking was at a dinner party!

Anyway, I was going for it and I did!

A few months later I opened the doors of the Stage Door Bistro & Wine Bar inthe theatre area of a seaside resort.It was an instant success. Even the stars and celebrities came flocking in. We had a stage of our own with a resident pianist and regular entertainment nights featuring everything from Gilbert and Sullivan to belly dancing!

Then I guess I got greedy and I took on a pub as well. The Brewers Arms in the middle of nowhere! My time at the pub was, without a shadow of a doubt, the happiest of my life. But it was simply too much. My absence from the Stage Door had a negative effect on business and my staff took advantage of me left right and centre. The ridiculous hours and the constant social life got the better of me and had a terrible effect on my health. The restaurant and the pub both had to go.

From there I went to Unwins Wine merchants, and after some training and some relief work I got my own branch in Tunbridge Wells, Kent. Sedate it may have been but but believe me, when the sun went down the rabble came out!. In the short time I was there, we had one armed robbery, three night-time break-ins and too many grab and runs to count! I phoned the police so regularly that they even suggested that we should put them on the friends and family rate!

However it soon became apparent that things weren't right. The deliveries of wine and spirits got smaller and less frequent, and soon I was stringing bottles out along the shelves to try and disguise the ever increasing gaps. Just after I got settled, Unwins went bust, so I went back to the kitchen! This one was in an enormous out of town gastropub, where I was grandly known as Head Chef. Just got comfy and the owners sold it, so off I went again!

This time I went to The Lamb Inn to stir a few pots, but that didn't work out.

That brings me up to date. For the last year and a half or so I've been working at a pub near Herstmonceux. The Bulls Head.It's a pub with so much potential, but it's underexploited. As an ex-publican I find it all very frustrating.

So what's next?I don't know.

But there's one thing I do know.

There's life in the old dog yet!

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What did you do this evening?

We broke a record at the pub today! We sold a hundred main meals! Not 99, not 101, but exactly one hundred! Plus heaps of starters and plate loads of puds!

Hungry folk appeared from all over - many had to wait for tables, but seemed happy to do so.

Frankly I'm knackered! The orders just kept coming and coming! If you could see the modest kitchen I cook in, you would appreciate what a feat that was.

I wasn't on my own of course. I had Alice - you'll remember her from my 'horses on the beach' photoblog, and there was the owner of the Bulls Head, Lindy Loo. Plus the bar staff who don't know the meaning of hard work!

Tonight was our weekly Fish Night. People came from far and wide for fish and chips, swordfish, sole, crevettes,scampi, mussels, and of course, our local delicacy - Sussex smokey pie..

Many of the locals feel important enough to rewrite the menu! They order fish and chips without chips, fish and chips without fish, scampi salad with no salad, and everything possible to try and catch Cheffie out! And quite often they succeed! But not tonight!

But we got through, and thanks to a pint of frothing Harveys finest ale at the end of the session, I recovered sufficiently to journey home and commit this minor achievement to my blog thing!

Tartare sauce anyone?

The Brewers Arms

A couple of years ago I said goodbye to a very special pub.  The Brewers Arms it was called, although the locals knew it by its nickname 'The Clappers'. 

It was built in 1753 as a hostelry and has been open uninterrupted to this day.  It's not easy to find, and without Sat Nav or local knowledge, you wouldn't stand a chance!  It's in deepest East Sussex, in a web of country lanes surrounded by fields, farms and hedgerows. 

The car park doubles up as a paddock and a tractor park!

My decor was somewhat unorthodox!  The public bar (the drinker's room for those not familiar with the English pub layout) was enormous. A cavern of a place with ceilings that almost touched the sky!  From there I suspended a collection of antique cycles, along with lots of ancient wicker baskets and a 200-year-old wheelbarrow. Cleaning

them required your host to climb to the top of an equally old set of wooden steps - feather duster in hand- whilst the floor swayed around several yards below. For some unknown reason, I always felt the urge to perform this hazardous task after partaking in copious quantities of IPA, much to onlookers' horror.

The saloon bar had a more practical ceiling height, and this was adorned with vintage farm implements.  In the restaurant I again continued the theme of ceiling covering, only this time it - and the walls- were completely covered with plates, cups and saucers!

There was also an enormous inglenook fireplace which remained unused, so this was filled with the contents of an old farmhouse kitchen which were given to me.  Add to all this, several hundred paintings and fading photos, and loads of very old books, and I guess you get the picture!  Dust ruled, but that was all part of the charm! Or so I told myself!

During the war, the public bar doubled up as a schoolroom to cope with the increase in kids due to evacuation from London.  Yet many of my locals had been in the village all their lives and had never even visited the wicked city.  

The regulars were a diverse bunch as you can imagine.  Farmers, local crafts folk, tradesmen and an ex-bank robber!  Mix them up with the well healed, the odd lord and lady, and a couple of reclusive celebs and I think you get the picture.  All ages too.  Some not old enough to be drinking, and others old enough to know better.

I could always spot the underage drinkers though because when I rang the bell for last orders, they'd put their chairs up on the tables and go outside to play!  I saw babies take their first steps in my bar, and others their last ones too.  One of my customers sat on the same bench week in, week out, for 80 years.

My pride and joy, however, was my cellar.  Deep underground and said to be haunted, it was dark and full of atmosphere, a constant 15 degrees with a wonderful beery smell that will remain with me forever.

From there I pulled up pints of Greene King IPA, spectacular Speckled Hen and ravishing Ruddles County.  The marvellous Moorland Original and my personal favourite, Abbot Ale.  Add to that a couple of guest ales which changed every couple of weeks.  I think that you can tell that we were THE place to enjoy a pint of frothing real ale, served in a dimpled tankard or a straight thin glass, filled almost to the brim, then topped with a creamy head.

Alongside my real ale portfolio, I grudgingly sold a couple of draft lagers. This was for the benefit of those whose taste buds were not sufficiently sophisticated to appreciate the joys of a proper pint of beer!

Our food was simple and traditional. Ploughman's lunches - crusty chunks of bread with strong cheddar and pickled onions - and steak and kidney pie.  Sausages with bubble and squeak. And my special baked ham, with hand-cut fries and free-range eggs from Mary down the lane. We were always fully booked for our famous Sunday Roasts! 

It could be a bit of a noisy place at times!  I used any excuse to put on live music.   Locals would turn up with a fiddle or a banjo.  Big Al would bash seven bells out of my piano in a performance of boogie-woogie and R&B, rivalling anything you'd hear in town.  

Every now and then, the main drink of the night changed to Guinness because Seamus turned up and entertained us with songs and odes from Ireland which became bawdier as the evening went on.

It is often said that Guinness is one of God's miracles. It goes down as black as coal, and comes out a stream of pure gold!  

I even gave in, and got a Karaoke machine! Unfortunately, I tended to hog it - particularly when I was feeling a little bit merry!

My customers loved their bar games.  Dominoes and crib. Chess, and shut-the-box!  I held quiz nights and video horse racing. There was never a dull moment at the Brewers.  

Every New Years' Eve our fancy dress party was the place to be!

Licencing laws stated that we were supposed to close at eleven. Somehow that didn't really bother us too much, and we tended to go on until everyone

had had their fill. On many an occasion, we'd continue right through the night, and watch the sun come up over the Brewers Field, leaning on the fence with a cup of coffee in hand. On others, we would all adjourn to a neighbour's house and return in the morning for a good old fry up and a 'hair of the dog'.

We loved our outings too! Twice a year we hired a coach, and off we went to the horse races. Stand by Goodwood - the Clappers are on their way!

The biggest night of the year was November 5th - Guy Fawkes night.  For weeks beforehand we would build an enormous bonfire in the Brewers Field.  On the night we would have a torchlight procession around the village with 3 marching bands, ending with one of the biggest firework displays in the county.  The car park was turned into a market of stalls selling crafts, soup, and flashing hats and necklaces.  Beer flowed straight from taps in the barrels, and 2500 people would pack into our tiny village centre.

My lot liked to dance. I had a brilliant sound system which could shake the building to its foundations! There was a special secret way of letting the locals know when I was up for late-night bop. I simply played 'Mambo Number Five' and they knew that Keith was having a party after the strangers had gone home to their cocoa and bed! The heavy curtains would close, the volume wind up and by three in the morning, the party was in full swing. 

Dancers on the floor, on the tables, and even on my precious bar top! 

There is so much more that I could write about the Brewers Arms. Perhaps one day I will.  My only regret is that I had to give it up. 

One February day, my doctor told me that if I didn't change my lifestyle straight away, I'd be lucky to see Christmas. Something had to go, and I preferred it not to be me!

It's all different now. The mountains of bits and pieces have gone. The walls are trendily modern, and the decor is minimalist. The regular drinkers have gone too - driven out by the 'townies' who travel from afar to imbibe fine wines, nibble posh food, and gawp at those funny old country people outside the window.  I returned once and was moved to tears when amid the silence, my head filled with the sounds of those happy reckless days of not so long ago.

I need a drink!

It goes straight through me dear!

It's the start of the lunchtime session at the Bulls Head. We eagerly await the army of pensioners that invade our restaurant to take advantage of the oldies special deal.

Cars manoeuvre this way and that - engines revving wildly. Drivers,who should have thrown their keys away years ago, attempt to position themselves between white lines painted on the forecourt surface. Their partners wave their arms around like demented windmills under the mistaken impression that they are helping the hapless drivers.

Eventually, they totter across the car park and stumble on the step as they make their triumphal entry through the bar doorway.

" Are you doing food dear?" they cry! "You know we are you silly old bat" we think. "Why else would we be standing here with menus?"

"We'll sit there dear" says an elderly lady, pointing to our largest table with her walking stick.
"Rather you didn't" says our barmaid. " there are only two of you, and that table sits eight"
" We'll sit there then" gestures the old biddy. "
"That's reserved" says barmaid " They booked".
" So did we " says old lady.
" But you didn't specify a table" says barmaid".

And so the conversation goes on until the old couple agree to sit on a small table in the corner despite the fact that they claim not to be able to see anything because of the dark!

"Miss!" calls out an old codger. " Will you close the window - there's a draft".

" Miss" calls another. " will you open the window - it's so hot in here"

Another couple are struggling with the menu. Every time the barmaid makes a suggestion it is met with an objection. They don't like spicy food. They don't like cod - they prefer haddock. He wont eat any 'foreign muck', and she dare not eat lettuce." It goes straight through me dear" she says.

Several times a week Glass Eye Gary comes in for his lunch. One eye darts hither and thither like a Big brother camera, whilst his false one stares straight ahead! After about an hour he makes his regular journey to the toilet, but not before he pops out his glass eye and drops it into his beer! "Someone drank some of my beer once" he says! He says it every time! " Won't do it again" he says. I had an old lady at my previous pub who did a similar thing, but it was her false teeth that she dropped into her Guinness! " Drink this and they'll bite your nose off" she used to say to startled onlookers!

One old boy comes in every week and always asks, without fail, if we have found his leather belt. "It was a good one. Quarter of an inch thick" he says. Seems he left it in the pub 37 years ago and he still lives in hope of its safe return! No one has ever asked him how or why he left it here in the first place!

Then there is Bert. He is 92 and has been coming to the Bulls Head since he was a boy some 78 years ago. And for all of his pub-going life he's sat in the same place and smoked his smelly old pipe! We have a smoking ban now, and he is really having difficulty in understanding why we have to help him to an outside bench when he wants to light up. " Bloody government. Like a police state"

Bowls of soup go out followed by plates of steaming steak pies and roast beef. Most don't finish their meals. " I eat like a sparrow" we are told several times a day. " May I have a doggy bag dear? I'll have the rest tomorrow"

We give them a small bowl of ice cream to finish their meal. Today one poor lady was struggling with two of her friends who were stone deaf. She was attempting to explain the various flavours of ice cream that were on offer, whilst my waitress patiently awaited a decision.
" She says that she has coffee, vanilla or strawberry" she yelled." But no toffee flavour today"

"I'll have toffee " says one of her friends.
"No dear" she says " There is none. Have coffee today"
" Oh yes, I like toffee"
" NO! C-coffee, not T-toffee!"
" No, perhaps I won't have toffee. I think I'll have raspberry"

And so it goes on! Five days a week! Every day the same as the last but with a different cast of characters uttering the same tired old lines!