April 17, 2025

You will always be welcome in my pub

Hello,

Sorry, it’s been ages. I had a massive depressive jag and it’s been hard to keep going with everything let alone write stuff, plus the pub’s been getting busier (good!) so I am, how you say, knackered.

Knackered and full of rage. Living in a country where a billionaire who wrote a series of books where a hat decides if you’re a main character has meaningful influence over politics is, frankly, fucking embarrassing. And cruel.

The UK has long been twisting itself into a mean little contortion of a country. Happy to see its own children starve if it means Amazon doesn’t pay taxes. Removing every protection and assistance that ever lifted people up. Outright racism and lies spreading hatred in the press. Thousands upon thousands of articles written screeching about trans people - a group that, in a YouGov survey just a few years ago, the general UK population overwhelmingly supported until they were lied about every single day in national newspapers and on TV news.

The UK media has created this wave of hate from nowhere. It didn’t exist, as recently as 2018 British people had no concerns about trans people, correctly. It’s a smear campaign directly funded by the US right wing and which far too many “journalists” (one of the most prominent ‘gender experts’ these days is a former novel reviewer) have realised there’s a fantastic paycheck in.

Well, you not only don’t have to write lies to drive hate against a group of people, you ought to be writing truth to elevate them. Otherwise you end up with a situation as bent as the one we’re in now where outright lies are taken as gospel because they’ve been regurgitated by someone on talk radio.

I was down the Bird & Barrel in Barnehurst last night, Bexley brewery’s taproom. In a professional capacity, just tasting ales, you know. Definitely not moving on to a rather strong perry and making poor life choices. Was having a lovely chat with some of the regulars until someone randomly brought up that they thought this EHRC ruling was good to protect women’s sports.

Was he a woman? No. Did he watch women’s sports? Also no. The first thing he had clearly heard about women’s sports for some time was that “two boxers who were genetically men” were in the Olympics. Even though both Imane Khelif and Lin Yu-Ting passed IOC testing and were proven to be women, the pernicious lie from the (dissolved and barred for corruption) former International Boxing Association has somehow taken over the narrative.

“Well I haven’t heard anything about that” he said. I explained no, because it was better outrage to repeat the lie. That the only trans athlete in the Olympics was a male boxer. That intrusive tests to prove gender are sexist and limiting to women in sports or any other context.

Then I had to go back to my pub to sort some things. And think about whether I’m doing enough to

Yes, my pub is a safe space for trans people. I’m aware many of my regulars may not understand trans people because they’ve never met any but I’ve tried to put in the groundwork conversations to make sure everyone would be polite. That they’ve got the chance to be decent or get barred and they understand the terms of that.

Had a fun one a few weeks ago when a regular was trying to claim that having any list of “right-wing extremists” in the UK was ludicrous. Because when had you ever heard of a right-wing extremist attack? I said really recently, you know when all those hotels were being attacked and people were trying to burn them down with kids inside. There was a pause. Then a weak attempt to argue that actually wasn’t right wing. Then another pause and finally we all had to concede that perhaps there was a point there. And that not everything is automatically true just because Neil Oliver (of all people) said it.

That’s the thing about pubs, everyone in them is a real person. Suddenly both the GB News-pilled bigots and the woke lesbian landlady are real people who have to deal with each other not the concepts of each other. And not to invent some sort of magical thinking but I think that’s a very important space, in a world that’s badly lost its way with a lot of made-up things, in forums better suited to online roleplaying than political debate.

Anyway, fuck this and fuck the EHRC. Trans people (and anyone else) is welcome to use whatever toilet they want in my pub, although I’d probably advise the ones round by the pool bar when it’s raining since the back roof’s pretty dodgy for leaks. And when we’ve finished our current fundraiser for a big dog’s cancer treatment we’ll be fundraising for London Trans Pride.

I might only be able to control my (admittedly big) pub’s space about it but if everyone in it goes and has the same conversations with people chatting rubbish around them then a small ripple effect is better than sinking further into the depths.

Which reminds me, pubs getting busier: a good thing, during a horrendously uncertain time for the industry. And even in a relatively small house you can do an absolutely roaring trade if enough punters show up. The pub I think about most often when I’m trying to work out how to pull mine up by it’s broken bar stools is the Dog and Bell in Deptford.

I used to live in Deptford Creek. As in, on a boat literally in the Creek, next to the Bird’s Nest pub. We tended not to go in there too much because the place was a bit of a hole in a sort of nice way but also we were already several points towards becoming Noted Local Eccentrics and everyone recognised us in there.

The Dog and Bell was a longer walk away by about 15 minutes (compared to err, 30 seconds including the time to open and close a gate) but we went there because it was a bit run down and always quiet. A lovely old couple ran it but it had clearly seen better days and when three of us showed up we were often doubling the number of people in there.

It looked, in short, like it was set for the list of pub closures. Some new people took it over and it’s been years and years to actually do this but they turned it round. It’s now still very much what it always was - a boozer that runs and annual pickle festival - but also a popular hot spot for people keen to support an independent local in an area that’s increasingly barren for that.

If the changeover had happened now, when I’m trying to do a similar thing a lot further out and with less immediate resources, would it have worked? I don’t know. Partly because it obviously wasn’t me what did it so I’m not sure how precarious the whole thing was but also because times are getting tougher.

Pubs are, ostensibly, a frivolous industry. The whole hospitality sector is kind of a luxury in that you don’t technically need it for survival. Arguably, the sector costs the NHS billions of pounds a year so why should it benefit from any tax breaks to survive? I haven’t actually seen one of these articles yet but I can easily imagine the snotty opinion column that says pubs are dying and good riddance, after all they’re just dingy hellholes selling shit beer and wine you wouldn’t clean a toilet with over the tinny sounds of a malfunctioning juke box.

Christ knows, my pub’s a shithole. The building isn’t exactly falling apart everywhere but is quite badly in a few places. There is no gastronomic or intellectual justification for what it does, craft beers are not gently reviewed here. Some of the clientele are outright scumbags and it’s got a manager who’s ex-Spoons. It’s an unhinged columnist’s dream in terms of tickbox savaging.

But I love my pub. Lots of other people love my pub. A big Newfoundland dog loves my pub so much he got a bit depressed when his owners were ill for a week and couldn’t bring him in. And we love him, which is why we’re fundraising for him all this weekend.

I think anyone mean-spirited about pubs is someone who can’t see the purpose of all that interaction. The quiet people who barely speak and sit in the corner but come out to be sociable for awhile, in their way. The loud groups of randoms. The people who’ve never met anyone like each other but get on.

It’s particularly sad that the ladies’ loos has become such a nasty battleground. The ladies’ is a location of profound sisterhood, where anyone will try to fix anything for you and the drunkest women you’ve ever seen in your life will tell you you’re absolutely gorgeous and your outfit is slaying even if you’re in your pyjamas having not washed for four days. It’s also absolutely vile in there and anyone who’s ever cleaned toilets can assure you it’s not sacred ground, except to the church of very, very drunk girls. Who would never demand to know what genitals you have because no one normal cares and drunk girls are very much more normal than angry billionaires and columnists.

Ah well. Onwards into the bank holiday.

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