I am the manager now
Hello,
Quite a lot of these will be more philosophical than this and there’s plenty of weird pub lore and strange stories about my particularly haunted cellar, etc. But it felt right to start off setting the scene: I am, as of December 3rd, the publican of a giant barn of a pub in the outskirts of London.
December is, obviously, a suicidally insane month to take over a pub. Especially one where the outgoing pub manager had been desperate to leave and not exactly planning ahead. Doing it on my own, after an exhausting final month under the charge of Big Timmy Spoons, is the sort of thing no one should be doing to themselves. But then, I did spend a lot of time working in the motorsport and automotive industries as a woman so a hostile environment clearly doesn’t scare me too much.
Or, of course, I’m so bloodymindedly competitive that the harder something is the more I want to do it. Which is why, rather than getting assigned a small pub somewhere near where I used to live I ended up being sent to one of the most challenging pubs owned by the company, that’s struggled to retain a manager.
Customers thought, on my first day, that I’d leave within 48 hours - fuck off, I told them, I’m not fucking moving house again (ever, frankly). Then that I’d be put off by first the Rangers fans and then the Irish Travellers - actually I get on great with both, knew quite a few of them from before. Then it was the odd bit of scruffy violence but well, I worked in Lewisham Wetherspoons for quite a long time so you can’t put me off somewhere with the threat I might get into a brawl. Then it was the stock take, which I was worried about but turned out to be one of the best the pub’s ever had - the cold hand of Big Tim does give you some rigour, in that respect.
I just about managed not to have a mental breakdown when I got the plumber in for the fourth time in a week over first the glasswash, then the bathroom, then the cellar, then the bathroom again flooding. I haven’t quite got the real ale lines working again but I know where I need to put the hose in to do it. I know that sooner or later the arcane eccentricities of the way the Sky boxes work here will have me sitting on the floor and crying but it hasn’t happened yet. People, even me, are starting to believe I will last the distance.
Even so, it’s a bit record scratch, freeze frame: you might be wondering how I got here. After all, this time three years ago I was signing a contract that would’ve paid my rent for half a year to interview Lewis Hamilton (didn’t happen due to, uh, Abu Dhabi 2021) and hadn’t pulled a pint for a pretty long stint.
It’s quite tough trying to reboot your career from the bottom when you’re nearly 40. I’ve worked in pubs before 2023, of course but if you’d asked me what my actual job was I would’ve told you I was a journalist. I might’ve even tried to claim that until this summer. I was still doing bits, after all. Getting flown to Abu Dhabi to interview autonomous race cars and that sort of thing.
I’d been fairly happy to climb the Spoons ladder for a bit, except that no one was offering me a rung. So when a different pub company came calling, via a very good friend who recommended me to them, I didn’t feel too bad about sneaking off to a pre-shift interview.
It’s not gonna be like working for Spoons, they pointed out. You have to run your own business. You’re a publican not just a manager. Made me a bit nervous, if I’m honest. Working in pubs fixed some of what journalism (or more accurately, the comments section and social media) had done to my head but it’d also made me a bit nervy about change.
It’d probably bum anyone out to lose their career and have to start at the bottom again. Especially when it was something I was, objectively, really friggin’ good at and had had a lot of success in. But that’s the way things go in motorsport and I am certainly not the first or the last person to find themselves realising that the race cars aren’t paying the rent anymore and that backup career plan better get into gear fast.
Feeling totally lost and depressed and like I might as well just do what my twitter replies were suggesting and kill myself now was quite a tough stint. I am physically and mentally transformed from it - literally about a third of the size I used to be and much jumpier about the risk of destabilising the fragile ecosystem in my skull. Occasionally I look back on the person that used to yeet herself round the world on budget airlines totally alone and think who the fuck was that, then.
She is still definitely in here, mind. The bit of me that spent more than three weeks a year sleeping on airport floors is the same bit that can get out of bed and deal with whatever the hell that noise in the cellar at 3am is. (god so help it if it’s sentient) That hasn’t lost my mind living alone in an enormous building, coped with kind of squatting in it for weeks before I’d got most of my stuff sorted. Can handle an 11:30pm fight after getting up at 6am on a handful of hours of sleep. Turns out I actually am pretty resilient and well, thank fuck because I’d be absolutely screwed otherwise wouldn’t I.
I also turn out to definitely know how to run a pub, which is a relief. I mean, I was fairly sure I did but to say it’s been a month of being thoroughly tested on everything would be very true and I have yet to find something I haven’t been able to deal with. Well, that’s not true - I fucked up ordering in the mixers on the Christmas schedule and we’re going to run out of full-fat coke but I’m trying not to beat myself up too badly about that.
That’s the mechanical stuff, of which there’s shedloads in any pub. But the other thing about running a pub is that it’s moderating a community, which is essentially what nearly every job I’ve ever had has been to a greater or lesser extent. It’s keeping the structurally important mumbling old men happy with their horse racing, it’s figuring out how to entertain people with no budget, it’s doing the sandwiches for the old people on Wednesdays and all that. It’s chatting to the customers and turning a group of apprentice builders who come in on Sundays into my pool B-team (it’s me, I’m Zak Brown now) and recruiting them to work behind the bar after their shit boss fired them at Christmas. It’s making fucking roast potatoes for the bar because it might nearly kill me every week but it keeps the regulars happy. It’s shit jukebox Mondays (a weekly highlight) and line cleaning Tuesdays (not a highlight) and quietly sweating in the Post Office queue about how much cash I have on me.
And, because I now live in ‘basically Kent’ explaining again and again that yes I don’t just look like a lesbian, it is in fact “LGBTQ+ bollocks” that’s pouring you a pint and if you don’t like immigrants you won’t like this pub much. And all the times the regulars bring me food and presents and offer to fix bits of the pub for me for free.
It’s a lot. But I’ve lasted four weeks now, if I can make it to a calendar month then maybe I’ll stop thinking it’ll all be over any second.
So if you find yourself in Northumberland Heath (an unlikely place for anyone to be but still) please come to the Royal Oak and I’ll serve you a pint. Maybe even do you some roasties if you time it right.
Hazel
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