Those of my readers who know me personally, will know that much of my life has been associated with pubs. I was introduced to the world of pubs by my father. Like Shakespeare, he was a pub person. Ben Johnson wrote of Shakespeare, that he was "wise with the wisdom of the alehouse and the stable, rather than learned in the solitude of books." I think Falstaff, Mistress Quickly and Sir Andrew Aguecheek can attest to that.
My father, an Inspector of Taxes no less, was nevertheless an alehouse person. When his family discovered that he sometimes frequented public houses, they were appalled. They were all teetotallers. Born in 1889, my father was one of thirteen children of a Victorian autocratic father, my grandfather being a Brigadier. Grandfather was also a cricket fan. He had a copy of Jack Hobbs autobiography. Somewhere in the book Hobbs mentioned that after winning a test match on a tour of Australia, the team had gone to the pub for a drink. My grandfather had written in the margin "Wrote to Hobbs who has assured me he has now given up this pernicious habit."
I had several silent meals at my grandfather's table, where children were not allowed to speak unless spoken to, and if Grandfather did ask you a question, you had to preface your answer by addressing him as Sir. So it was not surprising that my father had very little contact with me while I was a child.
But when I was old enough to sit on a barstool beside him at the pub, to my surprise, we communicated for the first time in my life, with no difficulty at all, even though at sixteen I was only drinking lemonade, while of course my father was not. He drank Guinness, followed late at night, by Trinidad white rum. I discovered that my tight lipped father, once settled on his bar stool, could talk to anyone in the world, on any subject they chose. He was a raconteur. Because of his father being the Brigadier, he had spent some of his childhood in India and South Africa. Before my father was born, Grandfather had lived in the Channel Islands, where he had been in command of the garrison in Jersey, where he married my grandmother, whose first language was French. Later, for reasons I never understood, and when they must have had lots of children, they lived in Alderney. My aunt told me that the butcher in Alderney when jointing a carcass used to say "Best end for the Andrewses and the rest for the Island."
When I was old enough to sit with my Dad at the bar, he was Inspector of Taxes for Hastings. The tax office was in Palace Chambers which was part of the same building as the Palace Hotel. So he had the Palace Bar in the same building as his Inland Revenue office and in the bar he had his own stool, known as Andy's stool. His employers would have been appalled to know that he was also what was known as a Bookie's runner. There were no betting shops then and cash betting was not allowed. But you could bet on credit and my father had a credit account, so used to take cash bets from all and sundry, on Andy's stool in the Palace bar, during his lunch break from the Inland Revenue. Whether the punters knew what he did for the rest of the day, I have no idea.
The beautiful wife of a great friend of mine, who thinks I lead her husband astray by taking him to the pub, says "Pubs are so boring. I can't understand why you feel you need to go to the pub when there's plenty of alcohol in the house, and it is so much cheaper." But we don't go to the pub to drink alcohol, we go for stimulating conversation, and to meet interesting people. Well it used to be like that, though I confess people now go to watch football matches and have their voices drowned out by loud music. There's a pub in Richmond with a board outside which says "This is a football free pub." It's usually packed on cup final day.
This evening, 59 years after I first sat on a barstool next to my father, I was having a pint or two in The Warrant Officer in Walthamstow. I met a Warrant Officer, not the one the pub is named after but another one, who explained to me that he had worked as a bodyguard for the Sultan of Brunei (while still in the SAS) also President Karzai of Afghanistan and had worked for various American security outfits in Iraq. I had no idea that the Ministry of Defence hired its men out to all and sundry, but apparently it's a considerable source of revenue, helping to circumvent any financial meanness to the armed forces by the Treasury.
Then we got talking to a young man who had looked down on the London Marathon from a high pod in the London Eye, and thought I could do that. He has now run a London Marathon himself and was sponsored by Fullers brewery to run the Paris marathon dressed as a bottle of London Pride. I thought you could only get London Pride on draught, but I do know I could not have had those two conversations drinking cheap supermarket cans in my own living room, though I would be a soupcon richer financially had I done so. Also I would not have rashly agreed to be the honorary treasurer for the local branch of the British Legion. Honorary of course means unpaid. An honour nevertheless. See you all next time.
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