Walkabouts

Unless you’re one of the blessed and wise humans that flick straight to the back page to read my column, then you’ve arrived here via a glut of heart-warming articles extolling the community values of the Great British boozer.

I feel I may be walking on a path well-worn by the soles of my own boots as I attempt to add to that championing of the importance of our industry within society, but I’ve been doing it most of my adult life and I see no reason to stop now.

We’re not just important; we’re not merely advantageous. We are essential.

And some are more essential than others.

Forgive the Orwellian elitism, but in the pub industry the value to the community is often inversely proportionate to size, wealth and power. Oh I know that some of the national brand pubs will team up with national charities and use their customers’ generosity to billboard their pseudo-altruism to the world. Whilst almost all charity work should be applauded; puffed-out chests bragging about the millions raised (the industry equivalent of six-formers pissing higher up the wall than the first years just because they can) resonate less with me than a local pub having a whip round for a recently bereaved customer or putting on a raffle for ­­­­the local hospice.

And where were these aloof market leaders when their customers needed them?  How did they keep in touch with those that they penny-pinched from when their licensed sanctuaries were taken away from them?

Those pubs that dine at the top of the industry tables (topped with A3 sized laminated menus adorned with photos of your next mouthful of mediocrity – “microwaved curry twice for table one thousand, two hundred and four please, mate”)  did little but the business equivalent of curling up in a ball, sticking their fingers in their ears and shouting ‘la la la can’t hear you’ until the grown ups came and told them that it was okay to come downstairs again.

Whilst companies employing tens of thousands of people who regularly undercut small pubs – some whilst avoiding corporation tax by being registered in The Cayman Islands who still claimed furlough from our taxes – many solo operators of VAT registered independent pub businesses, grants aside, got nothing. Zero. Nada. Many opted, and some were forced, to Slug it out and go Walkabout in a market where deliveries and takeaways became a life jacket, whilst, for some, it appeared that you can indeed have your Lettuce and eat it.

But many licensees went above and beyond mere survival. It quickly became apparent just how much people missed us and how valuable we are. The physical interaction between publican and punter dissipated onto social media pages, WhatsApp, phone calls and cheery house calls to the chime of the clinking of bottles or the familiar smell of home cooked food delivered by a friend.

Online, quizzers quizzed; singers sang, and communities communicated. We set ourselves apart from those who mimicked our product and values and bloated them into impersonal and impersonable halls.

Most that benefitted from the care and friendship proffered by the landladies and landlords of their local will not forget them for going those extra miles to bring that sense of friendship and belonging of the pub that they missed to their doorstep.

And although those who do so much to prop up the economy of the Cayman Islands may still undercut us and continue to take a bigger slice of the vac-packed pie, more people than ever now realise the value and vitality of their local, and more than ever are prepared to pay mates’ rates over Yates rates.