Bob you are really grinding my gears

You will have to forgive this post, it is without doubt a rant but a well needed one.

As you know I am a publican and as you also know all pubs in the country are currently closed. Now if you read the various forums and social media streams from the licensed trade then you probably also ‘know’ that all property landlords are evil and eat babies. You ‘know’ that all publicans are angelic hardworking and earn nothing and you ‘know’ that the support of hospitality ‘needs’ to continue for 5 years at least.

This is what I am seeing on a daily basis, it has got so bad that I no longer listen to the radio in the day because I am sick to the back teeth of the shameless way that inept operators are embarrassing this trade. Publicans used to be pillars of the community and many still are but the loudest voices make us look like snivelling kids begging for more all of the time.

The hospitality industry has had an unprecedented amount of support to get through Covid-19, more than anyone could have envisaged a few months ago. I want to look at the grants in particular, to be clear this is cash given to a business not a loan not a deferral it is real money paid into the bank .

From day one the message board were filled with whines about ‘when will I get it’ in fact by the end of week two I read publicans honestly claiming that they only had ‘5 days of food left for the family’. Firstly this is a business grant, do with it what you wish but it was not established to feed you and your kids fillet steak.

Mobilising this amount of money takes time and there has to be checks and balances within the system. If the money had all been distributed overnight by central government then there would have been justified uproar at money being sent to ex publicans, dead people and cats.

From about week three the ‘trade’ has been saying they need more grants, like a needy child looking for more milk. I have seen stories of people who are honestly moaning that they have spent £25K on bills for a closed pub in 5 weeks. There is currently no rent or rates so what the hell can you spend that much on? Especially when the majority of these publicans refused to pay their staff a penny until the furlough scheme kicked in.

I read today a woman at her ‘wits end’ because she had spent half her grant already on ‘vat and back rent’ whoa hang on a minute… VAT is collected by you on behalf of the government so you had this money, where did that go? and you owed your landlord rent, so you used the taxpayer grant to clear some bills did you? Well that might be where you are going wrong.

Anecdotally I am reading of people paying off their credit card bills, car loans and last payments on holidays before demanding the government does more to help them. These are not business people, and the pubs that they run are not businesses.

Then there is the satanic cult of the pub companies who have stopped collecting rent but refuse to make a blanket statement that you can have your property rent free for 9 months. Such is the anger at these awful organisations that the licensed trade is demanding that the government force the private companies to grant their wishes, come on Tinkerbell you can do it.

I have written about this before but the pub company is an intermediary. They borrow the money to buy the pub that you rent off them. Of course they cannot declare a blanket forgoing of rent, they have lending covenants and shareholders and nobody knows how long this will go on for. Some tenants are trying to make offers to buy the freeholds at a reduced rate, this may at least knock some sense into them.

Before every pub in the country was closed down commercial lending was considered high risk, mortgages struggled at 50% LTV and needed 40% deposits to achieve 6-9% above base rate. I don’t imagine that not trading has improved the appetite of the lenders.  So off you trot Bob with your happy smile and clutching your last weeks Z read and see how hard the banks laugh at you. Buying pubs is tough, lending is expensive and if it wasn’t you wouldn’t be a tenant would you?

Then we hear that grants are ‘not for paying rent’ yes they are! Bloody hell Bob you don’t even have to read anything, the nice man on the TV explained it, all you had to do was listen. The grant was intended for fixed business costs and rent is one of those in that it is fixed whether you trade or not. It is a bit like a mortgage on your house, if you are not there for a month you still have to pay it.

Throughout this tenants are paying private landlords or coming to sensible agreements. They are paying mortgages or deferring payments. The quiet ones in this trade are continuing to do what we do whilst collectively tutting the idiots who just make us all look bad.

So to be clear the whining idiots that you see are not publicans, they are chancers and failures and dreamers. They are probably all very nice people but they are still chasing the seat at the end of the bar with brandy and cigars, chasing but not working very hard.

We have been closed for 6 weeks, 14 pubs a week change hands due to closure every week so that is 84 pubs that we the taxpayer are currently keeping afloat. But we are not are we, we are keeping Bob afloat and Sharon and all of the people who think that the reason that they are not living the dream is because of the evil landlords.  When we all reopen theses pubs will still fail no matter how long the government pour our money into them.

One other point that seems to have passed Bob et al by is basic maths. You see they are all losing a fortune but, of course, that is not the truth. The true loss is the money currently leaving your bank account for the period of closure. That party you had booked in for last Saturday, that is not a loss Bob that is a lost opportunity try and remember that.  And do try and remember that pubs were closed on the 20th of March, that overdue account from Christmas that really isn’t Covid-19 related now is it?

The conventional wisdom is that a business should have sufficient liquid capital to cover 3-6 months of fixed costs. So we have been closed 6 weeks and you have been given some form of state assistance. Pipe down Susan I know you didn’t get a grant you have told everybody because it is just so unfair. You did get rates relief though, so if you were at the very bottom of the band you are saving just shy of £500 a week.

I know its not real money Susan and you can’t touch it but try this little trick. Place the money you would usually use to pay your rates on the table in front of you, touch it, feel it, its real isn’t it? Well you can keep that, how nice is that?

So lets be clear, if you cannot cover your fixed costs minus rent and rates (the two largest fixed costs) then you are not a viable business, you will not survive. Stop the teary eyed emojis and clapping the NHS and do the whole country a real favour, stop milking the state aid chuck the keys in and f*ck off.

There are a great many great tenants running good businesses please don’t think I am tarring all with the same brush. I am just so tired of reading whining posts from incompetent and bankrupt tenants who will all exit stage left when beer duty and VAT rise to pay this all back. This is a tough trade, it has been for years, but there are some tough operators and they are just getting on with it.

Thanks for listening (I know you speed read it) I feel marginally better and am off to do some decorating while Bob applies for some charity loan.

 

NOTE: All names are made up apart from mine, I think I am real….

 

Tricky shadows and guard ducks

One of my neighbours recently commented (from further than the mandated social distance) that it must be so hard for me having nothing to do as I am usually so busy. I said that I was actually busy decorating (which is normally obvious because I look like I have been in an explosion in a paint factory). The response was along the lines of “but after that” and it made me think that perhaps people underestimate the scale of the task.

The walls alone amount to 90 m² of real estate and need (or have had) a minimum of 2 coats. Being an elderly pub there is also a distinct lack of anything true, square or stable. Nearly 6 kg of filler has gone into this exercise and today the dreaded ‘window of doom’ resulted in me having to go old school and deploy newspaper to try and fill the acres of void. You kinda know its a a big job for filler alone when you drop your scraper into the hole and have to fish it out!

When the walls are finished there are ceilings to paint (if paint is available by then). Before anyone reminds me that one should start at the top when decorating let me remind you that paint is currently as rare as open pubs and also ceilings can be slotted in around trading hours. The floor and the deck still need doing as do all the windows, so don’t worry my 12 hour days will continue well into reopening.

I am sure we have all noticed oddities in the current situation but let me share two that I have witnessed recently. The first involves queuing outside of the small store in town. There were 2 people in the queue in front of me and about 4 behind me when one person left and the young girl ushered one person in. As luck would have it the guy at the front was waiting for the person who had just exited so this put me in pole position.

A minute or so later, with nobody else exiting the store, said girl ushered us in “you can all come in now”. I confess to being bemused as to what had happened between me not being able to enter and then everybody being allowed in. I did think that it may not have been pandemic related, perhaps somebody had gone into labour or maybe monsters had to be trapped? Perhaps they were relaying the hopscotch markings on the floor? I made the effort to check the entire store (it is not large) and nothing seemed amiss, damn they are good!

The second oddity is speaking to the guy in the chip shop on the corner who was stood patiently waiting for passing trade (they don’t do deliveries). The apparent innocence when he noted ‘it’s dead out there’ made me wonder if there is some alternate news source that is telling people life is back to normal. The fact that the government are telling people to stay at home at every opportunity appears to have completely missed the poor fella.

As I type this I have left Gav duck in charge of Henry who is complaining that his share of the workload is currently excessive. Apparently he never signed up for working the sort of shifts he is currently on and resents the term ‘key worker’ as he doesn’t want to come out, he just wants to get back in the cupboard.

I have tried the ‘all in this together’ chat and he just pointed to the ducks getting drunk every night. Gav duck is currently enforcing some social distancing for Henry as he is the only one large enough to defeat an attack. Meanwhile Terry and Sausage ducks are still grinning about my earlier discovery.

I had noted that the vinyl wall paint is quite a nuisance and often looks patchy even after the second coat. In part this can be attributed to rushed, rubbish or just lazy painting but it also seems to change by time of day. I have noticed that some areas that looked great in light then spring a light patch in the dark. This morning I noticed a patch of red that looked light and made a mental note to grab the red roller whilst muttering that I am sure I have already hit this patch.

It was a couple of hours later that I got around to touching this area up and low and behold I could not find it. I studied the wall from every angle and it was fine. It would appear that what I am seeing, in paint blinded state, is reflection from a rough surface. Hence I now have the ducks in fits of hilarity that I have been chasing my arse trying to paint over bloody shadows!

 

 

Sorry guys I tried…

Advanced warning – Not a humorous post (sorry)

So the time has come, as we both knew that it would. Our oldest child is about to attain the heady age of 18 and we need to address the elephant in the room. The elephant, in this case, is the 3 bedroom house that you still live in and I still pay for.

Of course it is not just you, our son and daughter live there and your current partner oh and your daughter who shares a room with ours. We both knew that this day would come, it should be etched in your mind after all the state sponsored lawyers fought hard to achieve this among many other wounds while you continued to sleep with the third party in our marriage.

As in everything else I have forgone revenge, ignored hatred and looked after my children. I have provided the home that any spare prick could enter if he called you good looking (hey I ain’t specsavers am I ). I won’t lie, the mortgage has often been a relatively easy payment, in cash terms, but sometimes not so. If there is a credit for going above and beyond then I should maybe earn it for paying the mortgage from a hospital bed (no sick pay here) or when I had no work. There may even be points for paying a mortgage whilst living in cesspits over pubs or on mates floors, if so I claim them now.

It is ok I know my role, I guess I always did. I am here to provide and I will ALWAYS look after my gorgeous children. So you have had some 16 years to make provisions, you have had a number of bequests and a number of partners living rent free how did that work out?

Let me tell you how it worked out for me, I couldn’t remortgage because I was bound to a house I couldn’t enter. I missed my children so terribly that I cried as I shuffled in the car to get to sleep or waited for the party to end so I could grab a sofa, I didn’t miss my bed because I knew by then that three of us shared it. So what did I do? I worked, I worked hard and then I worked some more but you knew that I would because that’s why you chose me, you knew it was who I was, an easy mark.

So I moved into a rental, the best that I could do as I was shackled to our home. I cleaned cigarette butts from under the bed in the only furnished let that I could find. I made the best second home for our children that I could it was all that I could do. Our children asked questions of my accommodation that left me crying at night, I wanted to provide an example of life, of what you could achieve if you worked hard, but instead I demonstrated how to apply pest powder.

Am I proud of my life? No, quite simply I am ashamed, ashamed of how little I have achieved and how poor a parent I have been but more than anything I am devastated that you are the mother to two of the most perfect people in the world.

So the day came, we knew it was coming. How did you handle it? How about telling the kids that the old man hasn’t done too bad? after all you slept around and he kept at it, kept his cool and kept on paying. How about mentioning that he didn’t always use that deodorant but on that ice cream trip he had slept in the car and had no chance to change his clothes but still would have cut his arm off to see your smiles. You could mention how he paid the mortgage when he had nothing coming in, never faltered, never failed to keep a roof over you and whoever s head? How about telling them that 16 years on they can still make that grizzly old man cry and have tonight?

Nope because, and I learned this a long time ago, it is and will always be about you. So take your opportunity, enjoy the sympathy as the ‘evil’ man stops paying the mortgage on the house that he first mortgaged at 20 years of age. Yes, my mortgage was long before you because, unlike you, I know the meaning of work. Enjoy the fruits of my labour and hide any realism behind your sense of entitlement. Enjoy scaring our children because you feel it will help you extract some additional sympathy from the situation, above all never admit what you are.

Don’t give me a second thought, don’t look at the pictures of the doting father and wonder how this has affected him. Don’t for one minute think of how you have systematically poisoned the relationship he has with his children for no tangible gain. Make me into your demon and I will just plod through after all its what I am here for isn’t it? I will cling desperately to the hope that one day our children will realise that I was the good guy and that I love them and I will hope I am still here when that day comes.

 

Questions, influence, closed doors and property

It is often assumed by my customers that I have spent a lifetime in the licensed trade, I put this assumption down to my general lack of tolerance rather than any particular talent that I display. Occasionally somebody will ask the question ‘so why are you here?’ and sometimes I realise what a difficult question that can be to answer. The question was asked yesterday and when I finished late last night the question was still in my mind when I looked at social media and found this picture.

 

This got me thinking as to who I could ‘blame’ for where I find myself today? Who are the influences in my life that led me to the freehold of the Plough? I guess that they are the people who have allowed me ‘behind the scenes’ of their businesses and, to a degree, their lives. I have always had a fascination with what happens behind closed doors, some of my ‘other’ career highlights have been the ability to enter secret locations, to walk underground tunnels and just to go where the public can’t or even when they can’t. So being part of pubs was always going to be somewhat addictive and I started at a young age! So a small roll call of those who drove me to my own pub:

• Trevor and (to a lesser degree) Pete at the holiday park – The mania that was a busy holiday park in the eighties was an eye opener for a young lad. Glass washing, cleaning and eventually serving beer in the insanity of summer was tempered delightfully by opening the damp empty bars for ‘functions’ in the off-season. Trev was simply insane and I still have fond memories of the madness that was the club.
• Terry, Carol & Woodsy at the Phoenix (hence the news clipping) – Somebody had to teach me the skills of finishing in the later early hours and then restarting a few hours later for a Sunday lunch session. Here I was taught that you are always public property in this trade, thanks for the dinners when I looked like I needed them Carol and for treating me like family. My old mate Woodsy helped to draw the showman out of the shy kid and the old man (Tel) introduced me to Underburg and the principle of always powering through except, of course, for when he nipped upstairs for a nap. I was deeply saddened when the grand old dame of the town was demolished but perhaps viability was its last lesson.
• The Ship & Shorty – For showing me that there still is a lot of love for a good pub, even a tired old one, it was a privilege to be your landlord and thank you for your support.
• Andrew and Helen at the Albion – For reminding me that we’re not here forever, for resetting my maths and for giving me the kick I needed. For every one of those mornings of driving past at silly o’clock and thinking ‘I would rather be there’, for showing me that it’s a way of life not a living and simply for reminding me that there is always a way. When I am tired I remember working with Andrew and Dave in the cellar while Helen was in the bar and Sue was in the B&B rooms and it reminds me that I can be tired because there is only one of me. Oh and of course to Andrew for being as close to a responsible adult as anybody can be in this trade.

So when you ask ‘why are you here?’ the answer is a series of odd memories, emotions and feelings. It is the image of Trev falling over with half a dozen till drawers and being so drunk that he just lay there and laughed, it is cuddling Rex the most vicious pub guard dog that I have ever met, it’s the red faces, the shouting and tantrums. It’s the feeling and smell of a sticky bar after a successful night, a pep talk from Woodsy that was always given an inch from your face at high volume. Its struggling to hold it together around the smell of beer after a heavy night, it’s the smell of sweat and condensation when you lock up after a busy night. In fact it is just that this trade is a calling and if it’s in your blood you will always return.

There are of course many more people who have supported me and continue to do so. Many of you have listened to me debate the details of business plans as I have stressed over the various potential properties and their viability. You have listened to me talk myself variously in and out of some venues and generally put up with the madness that led to me being here and I thank you all.

I am not sure if this answers the question but at least it acknowledges the trade influences that got me from 14 to now, thanks guys.

Retirement raffle – its an investment!

I have recently completed another review of the pub market from my perspective and my record remains pretty good. Every so often I review the pubs that have shown up as potentials and look at where they are against my thoughts at the time, its nice to check. Where I concluded that there was simply not enough demand to support the house they have closed, on this I remain 100% accurate. Where people have lost their way with the business and are treating the commercial sale as a residential one they remain on the market. The trouble with this approach is that the emotions associated with selling a home are not supported by the reality of the trading figures, again I am bang on target.

This time around there are a couple of quirks of the market that surprised me. One premises that has been occasionally and very cautiously marketed, I got as far as the ferry on one occasion before they changed their minds, has ceased trading. It is always sad to see a venue cease trading under any circumstances but I was surprised to see plans to extend the post office counter to become the only trading activity. The pub rescued the post office service many years ago when it couldn’t survive on its own for this to have now overtaken the pub in terms of trading viability is both astonishing and sad. I suspect that family dynamics may have held greater weight in this decision than pure economics but nonetheless its a surprise. My thoughts were that the early toe in the water would be followed by a more firm commitment to sell in the future and certainly I kept a close eye on developments.

The second venue that surprised me was an outside option whose status I am unsure about. This venue is marketed by one of those awful business selling sites that requires the DNA of your first-born before you can ‘join’ and then bombards you with irrelevant garbage, needless to say I have progressed no further than the front page. It was during my search for more information on a premises that is being sold by the owners of 4 years due to “retirement” that I discovered how they had come about the purchase. The pub was last sold via a raffle with tickets costing £20 each and the winner getting the freehold. Fair play to anybody who can take £20 and in just four years have a return on investment that allows them to retire but again I feel there is more to the story.

So what Have I learnt? Well commercially failing post offices can surpass the turnover of a well-loved local pub and that a raffle is a legitimate way of selling a pub. Before you leap to the keyboards to pen me a comment pointing out that the trade is in a dire state and I would have to be mad to buy a pub please remember, as I have said many a time, it is not a choice. Don’t bother scouring the web for the trade news that told us this was the worst New Year in the on trade to date with more people staying at home and even youngsters eschewing alcohol, I have seen it already. Even whilst reading the bad news stories my mind was ruminating on potential extensions for letting rooms. For some there is just no escaping the trade we just adapt to the difficulties and plough on.

Dust, DNA and Empathy – I need a pint

Before I start I would like to just reassure everyone that I am not having a crisis of confidence or any such silliness. This post is not a continuation on a theme, well maybe it is but it isn’t supposed to be it’s just the way the timing goes.

I happened to have 5 minutes to kill before an appointment yesterday when I was stood at a demolition site, an old sorting office I believe. The machines had removed a large part of the building and this opened a view into several offices on the top floor as well as a services room on the ground floor. Where many would see dust, noise and nuisance I saw history being dismantled.. I see this all of the time in old buildings, I don’t just see empty offices but I see generations of staff progressing through their career. I see the young man proud to have made that step from blue to white collar but still never truly feeling like he belongs ‘upstairs’. I can see the congratulations as people move on and families grow, all of the stuff that happens everywhere but will never again happen here.

In the services room I can see the education of young sparkies learning their trade, including the sweat, bruises and frustration. The big office on the left hand side with a view of the park will have been a senior one inhabited previously by both the beloved and the reviled, it comes with the territory. The building has echoes of retirees fondly recounting new plans but also those who quietly mourned their own loss of purpose. The building will have seen shifts spent wishing to be anywhere else but also shifts spent gratefully in the solace of work. The toil within this building will have funded generations of households as they struggled through lean times and enjoyed the more bountiful.

I can see the dozens of times that the “writing was on the wall” as new systems, machines or routines were introduced, each new introduction eventually becoming the favoured tradition only to be displaced by the next great idea. I know that the inevitability of closure will have led to a perverse confidence that it wouldn’t happen ensuring that there was no real preparation for the end. At the end I can see the shock and the distasteful picking over of the building and its contents. There will have been a palpable sense of loss as other parts of the business identify what they will salvage and transplant into other sites assisted by staff that are seeing out their notice.

All of this I see in a building and perhaps that is where my empathy lies although I am not sure why. It could be that as a young railwayman during privatisation, and long after, I watched the decimation of a great industrial heritage but I don’t think so. I like to think it is an Engineer’s trait, we are more tied to the buildings that we inhabit than other people because we share a physical bond. Those dirty workshop floors are not just stained with grease they are stained with the sweat and blood of us and our predecessors, we can honestly say that our DNA is in a building. The further you go back in the history of our trade the more blood, sweat, limbs and even lives were lost achieving what needed to be achieved.

It is in these buildings and their services that asbestos quietly crept into lungs before claiming years of life like some natural tax inspector. Too many substances, processes and activities to name have reduced the length or quality of the lives of those of us that just have to make and repair things, new ones keep appearing at a regular rate. So for me it is the inherent tie between Industrial Engineers and their environment, going back through the generations that breeds my empathy with old buildings.

This is not solely the plight of Engineers though, it is also the plight of many modern day publicans. There is no glamour or wealth in the licensed trade anymore, it has long since departed, but there is history in these buildings. Not text book history, not always tangible history but a history of life lived, of young becoming old, christenings and wakes and hey all of those parties had to happen somewhere. Just knowing that a building has been a social hub for generations makes it call out to me to protect it and hey if we don’t keep traditional pubs alive then one day your grandchildren will be asking what they used to be like.

Hey that could be my new pub slogan “From wetting your head to sprinkling your ashes and every event in between, we are here for you”

 

No thanks and the blame game

A young couple in the pub on Saturday night were questioning the last train home. They were not teenagers but his jeans looked like they had been attacked by a threshing machine and were 3 sizes to big. I have learnt that ridiculous looking clothing is a sure indication of “young”. Having decided that they had time for another drink they took to talking to some locals about the area and said that they were considering moving.

Apparently they lived in Chelmsford, a nearby town, and were not impressed. After glowing praise from the locals they hit the inevitable down side which is that there is no work so “if you can get to work from here”. This is another indication of age difference, we all assume that people have to work I guess you could call it senior naivety. Oh no they proclaimed “we don’t work” and went on to explain that they had 6 children and 3 grandchildren. Apparently the ‘viewing’ had involved visiting all of the pubs in town to see how they liked them.

If a single politician in this country should ever have a desire to know what is wrong, I hold out little hope, they wouldn’t go far wrong speaking to this couple. A state sponsored breeding machine who believes that they deserve to live somewhere nicer and whose priorities are the pubs! There are many reasons why it is nice where I live and one of them is that these people were only visiting.

I would also like to share with you a classic example of female logic (sorry girls). A woman got on the train today with a wheeled suitcase but it was upside down so she was dragging the case and the wheels were in free air. As she struggled with the case she didn’t once pause to look at what was causing the increased friction, she carried on cursing the case. Ladies next time you question men’s understanding of you think back to this, if an inanimate object gets blamed what hope do we have?

I have succeeded in not burning up once this weekend and only twice last week, neither associated with alcohol. I have taken to swallowing anti-histamines before visiting the pub but I think I will stop this next weekend as I am not convinced of the link. Thankfully I am seeing my doctor on Friday and not his lunatic colleague so perhaps we will make some headway.

In other news the exercising is clearly working as I have developed a small tear on lefty’s scar tethering. Because the scars grow into the muscle they are anchored to it rather than floating over the top as skin is supposed to. When the muscle works and grows it pulls at this tethering and the scar rises as it is irritated. I like to think that this is an indication of success.

Once again it has been lovely to watch my gorgeous isle as the sun nurtures trade and visitors. Watching local businesses emerging from the stark winter and discarding memories of floods. My twitter feed has been full of beautiful pictures and even sad farewells from solent crossings. I very much look forward to being a more active part of island life just as soon as I can.