Known locally simply as "The Dog", I had been in this pub many times before I started working here at the age of twenty. It had a music room upstairs and one of the landlords, I think was Reg Cox, who was also an amateur bass player who my Dad knew, so we went there to hear music (of a kind).
It was also at the far end of the town (from "our" end) and although there were pubs even further along, it was often the last on the traditional crawl along the High Street at Christmas and New Year. Once you got here and it was close to midnight, you couldn't be bothered to go on to the Black Cross really, could you?
It also has the honour of being the first pub that I ever bought myself a beer in. That was the summer of 1981 (so I was sixteen years old, but bold with it) I went in and bought myself half a pint of Ansell's bitter on the way home from a concert at South Bromsgrove High School after which my girlfriend Annie had dumped me. This was the way to deal with disappointment - drop into the nearest pub and join the Ansell's Bittermen.
Anyway, work.
I couldn't hack another holiday job washing up but I had to have a job if I wanted to stay at home and not pay rent over the holidays. I dithered, but my mother would generously open the paper for me at the local jobs pages and hold the paper while I rang up. I think I had an "interview". I hadn't any bar experience, but I had sold ice-creams and this was just the same but for grown-ups, surely. I'd also, by this time, acquired a taste for beer in all it's forms so I was happy to say yes to whatever deal might get me a few freebies.
I ended up working there for three or four holiday stints while I was at college. A couple of Christmases and a couple of summers probably. I remember having to wear a toga on New Year's Eve one year and behind the bar used to get soaked with slops from the hand-pumps but not much else.
The chef was a swiss guy called Guido who left some equipment on one night and nearly burned the place down. Oh and I got a black eye one Saturday night (when by tradition we'd have a lock-in for staff and selected friends after hours). I was having a perfectly civilised conversation with a young woman when it seems her husband decided I was being too familiar (and adorable, obviously) and when he got up to go to the bar, he took the opportunity to punch me in the face, sending me rolling across the floor. He was barred, I got free beer and a steak to put on my eye on the way home.
As well as the main bars there was a very (literally) tacky back bar that (because it was the eighties) became the "Wine Bar". Everyone had to take their turn to work in there, but nobody wanted to. The carpet in there was particularly sticky because we served a lot more drinks "with black" than the main bars - rum and black, malibu and black, lager and black (!) either that or "with pineapple". If you fancied someone you might give them a little paper umbrella in their drink.
Oh and they called me "Frankie" because I had my hair cut short back and sides but long on top and fiercely gelled so they said I looked like Frankenstein. They were not really the sorts of people to whom you could say "I think you mean 'Frankenstein's Monster'"
I started this series of notes on all the places I've worked about a year ago here on Steemit, soon after I'd first joined. It was a quieter place then and we were all experimenting with what worked to attract earnings. This didn't work as well as other things, but I think it's worth reviving now that there's a more diverse audience here.
Previous entries:
Beach Café, Bowleaze Cove
Swan Theatre, Worcester
Owen Owen, Redditch
Now you can go back and sing in all those places :) To have new and old mix memories all together, helps messing with your brain :D
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