What would I do without the Public House?

My very first earned income came from a local pub, where I waited on tables at night, and worked hot dog vans on the beach at New Brighton through the day, during holidays from Art School in Wallasey, England.

Skipping many years, bar work was a lifesaver. Every pub seemed to need staff: start immediately young man. New Brighton, Weymouth, Guernsey, Suffolk, Australia.

As a life’s work, carpentry and music kept body, soul and family together and fed, and the rent paid. But the pub furnished the opportunities, inspiration, and employment of a different kind: music.

On Guernsey, for example, where life was a touch fragile, whenever I found myself unemployed and rent looming, I would dress in style. I owned two rather good suits then, and shirts with crisp collars, and a beard of romantic trim.  I would wander to one of my favourite and delightful pubs in St. Peter Port, sure to meet acquaintances and friendly drinkers, where during conversation I would number my talents and need for employment. What a labour exchange! My friendly stranger invariably became a source of info and leads and certain employment.

I’m not saying that this would be the case today, but not much has changed, really, at the Local. Nevertheless, the pub has, indirectly, kept my family in funds, and fun, for a lifetime.

To Australia; a life-change, almost a different planet. To a ‘job’ selling houses for Ray White’s at Stones Corner in Brisbane. There was no work in those days. No carpentry, no music for me, no work of any sort listed in the Courier Mail. A quite severe depression, though we didn’t realise it at the time.

After a terrible period of no income, saved only by my kindly boss Rene Rankin, things looked up. The pub on the corner was our five o’clock meeting place. All local business staff assembled without fail; bank staff, solicitors, salesmen, shopkeepers; all the locals. Such business went on, in the most convivial way. Leads from solicitors, saxophones acquired by the music shop, instruments at the antique shop, even enquiries from from friendly neighbouhood real estate agents.

All this pub interchange became a delightful and lucrative society which grew over the years and consolidated mutual trust with an eye to business. To have been T-total and shunned the pub, would have been to isolate oneself from job-offers and friendship, and mutual benefice.

Life without The Pub would have been a dreary existence; anti-social, cut off from friendship, conversation, even income. Later, hotels became eager venues for bands and music; more income and employment, lucrative too in the early days, a situation now ended.

So, thank you all publicans out there, for your support, your hospitality, and your supply of good cheer, conversation, conviviality in good times and bad. And The Pub; home from home, meeting-place for all, uncritical, welcoming, and offering employment to young lost souls.