Life Behind Bars

A bottle of wine contains more philosophy
than all the books in the world.

Louis Pasteur

© Kate McGregor and Linda Tweedie 2011

The authors assert the moral right to be identified

as the author of the work in accordance with the

Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be
reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any
means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without
the prior permission of

Fledgling Press Ltd,

7 Lennox St.
,
Edinburgh
,
EH4 1QB

Published by Fledgling Press, 2011

www.fledglingpress.co.uk

Cover design by Graeme Clarke

eBook Format ISBN 9781905916436

Paperback Format ISBN:
9781905916429

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the following
people, without whom this book would not have been possible.  They are the
ones who got on with the work, didn't cause any problems (well, none we have
written about,) and propped up the buggers in the stories.

Barry Alexander

Nikkol Baillie

Liam Brown

Mary-Anne Burns

Debbie Chisnall

Liam Cornwell

Simon Costello

Trisha Flynn

Johnny Holmes

Joe Hunter

Izzy and Jessie

James McGregor

Counsellor John McNeil

Sharon Nicol

Pauline Ritchie

Liam Scott

Michelle Sheridan

Derek Sneddon

Louise Steele

Alin Wallace

Rosie Westlake

Foreword

Life Behind Bars is the brain
child of two larger than life ex-pub landladies, Kate and Linda, who have been
best friends for over thirty years and have racked up almost as many years
collectively in the licensed trade.

Between them, they have owned
and managed everything from a lap dancing bar to an old country inn, and many
others in-between.  Being a landlady is almost a vocation.  You have
to be all things, to all men, at all times.  All that for probably fifty
pence an hour.  They have been threatened, they have been physically
attacked and even shot at, and that was just family and friends.  Wait
till you hear what the customers get up to!

Join them on a hilarious
journey meeting Tint Eastwood, the Three Mary’s, the Cider Man, The One Armed
Bandit, Lily and Marion and many more, all with tales to tell.

Truth is often said to be
stranger than fiction, and in this case it is hard to believe that many of
these antics actually happened.  But they did.  All the names of the
participants in this book have been changed by necessity; we don’t want anyone
being sued.  Although there are a few we would dearly like to! 
Anyone who has ever run a pub or frequented one will immediately recognise the
characters.  In fact, it could be you we are writing about!  Or maybe
you are in the next one!

Sadly, in a few years there
may well be no characters like Linda and Kate.  Why?  The rate of pub
closures has reached epidemic levels.  It is estimated that thirty pubs a
week close, thirty a week!   At that rate the ‘Great British Pub’ and
the ‘Great British Publican,’ but more importantly the ‘Great British Customer’
will soon no longer exist.

So
enjoy this; let’s face it, soon there may be no more to write about! 

How do you do?

This is the tale of two
formidable ex-landladies, who fear nothing and no one, except perhaps the VAT
inspector and even he came to grief at their hands (honestly he did.)

If we had a pound for every time
a well meaning person uttered those immortal words ‘You should write a book,’
we could solve the National Debt.  So we did; (write a book that is, not
solve the National Debt) and here it is, so sit back and enjoy the ride.

I’m Linda and the senior of us
two; obviously I don’t look it.  And I am wholly responsible for my
partner in crime, otherwise known as Kate, becoming a member of that once elite
body ‘The Licensed Trade.’

I have always been the most
generous of people, especially with pain and suffering, and she had avoided
marriage very successfully so I saw no reason to let her off scot-free.  I
persuaded her to come and join us, and buy a pub.  To let you know what a
devoted friend I am, the night before her final interview with the brewery, I
helped her demolish a litre bottle of vodka.  Well you have to don’t
you? 

How she ever got through that
I’ll never know, but she did and she was off and running.  I have to say
she would have been better off running!

Within four weeks she had signed
on the dotted line and paid her money.  She was ‘official’ and
‘legal.’  This allowed her to sign passport applications and assure HMG
that she had known most of the lowlifes in the area for at least ten years and
they were of good standing!  Apart from that there were no real advantages
except that she could sell booze.

I generously offered to be her
mentor and she would be my apprentice.  That lasted exactly one
hour.   We had been friends for thirty years and had seldom had a
cross word.  Forty minutes into her new career she very unpleasantly told
me she would dispense with my services and I was to ‘fuck off’ back to my own
pub and leave her alone.  Well!

As I said earlier, countless
people had told us to write a book and countless times the reply had been, “If
we did you’d never believe it.” 

All the incidents have some
bearing on the truth and all the characters have no bearing on reality, they
are all real; just have no bearing on reality.

You must be joking
. . .

It is almost 2am and I am alone in the bar, lovingly nursing a delicious vodka and tonic and pondering over the
evening’s events.  I enjoy the stillness of the place that less than an
hour ago was bursting with life and noise.  While the glasses remain
strewn across the bar and the smell of cheap perfume and sweat still lingers.
And the dog has piddled against the bar because you either forgot or ignored it’s
plaintive barking to go out.

This is the world that we
publicans inhabit and quite frankly, customers in general are a bloody nuisance
and only make the place untidy.  I would much prefer them to just send us
a cheque once a week; we’d then supply them with booze delivered to their home
and let the buggers mess up their lounges, be sick in their toilets and shag
their own wives. How pleasant and profitable life would be.

But till that happens I can enjoy
the solitude, until the phone breaks my reverie.  All pub phones ring at a
hundred decibels so they can be heard over the Saturday night noise.  But
at 2 am in an empty bar, it could summon the dead.   As I struggle
off a wobbly bar stool, well I think it’s the stool that’s wobbling; wondering
who has lost their keys, their mobile phone, or a maybe a husband MIA.

“Hello?”

“Hello it’s me.”

“For fuck’s sake, it’s 2am which
me
is it?”

“It’s
me
, me”

Then the penny dropped.

“What’s wrong?  What’s
happened?”

“Oh my God! Oh my God! 
You’ll never guess! Big Agnes dropped down dead.”

“You’re kidding!”
(Why
anyone says this, or why anyone would joke about such a thing is beyond me.)

“Of course I’m not kidding. 
Oh my God it was terrible.  We’ve had the police, ambulance, fire
brigade.  We even had to shut the bar early; lost a fucking fortune.”
 
(Oh yes, we are all that crass!)

“What happened?”

“Christ, you’ll never believe it
and if you laugh I will NEVER speak to you again.”

God it
was
serious. 

“What happened?”

“She dropped down dead.”

“Dead?”

“Don’t you laugh.”

You should never say that to
anyone.  Even if it’s not funny, they are going to roll about
hysterically.   I could feel the laughter rising already and I didn’t
know what had happened.

“Well she dropped down
dead.  Right at the end.”

“The End?  End of WHAT?”

“You dare laugh!  Her song.”

“For fuck’s sake, her song? 
She was singing?” 

“Remember we had a big karaoke
competition on.”

“Right, right, and what
happened?”

“Well Agnes had just come to the
end, given it full blast, grand finale and then she just dropped down, stone
cold dead.  Oh my God, I still can’t believe it.”

Why would she think I’d laugh,
what could be remotely funny about that?  There’s more to this!

“What was she singing?” I
whispered.

“I knew it, I knew you’d
twig!” 

You know what’s coming? 
You’ve already guessed?  What would I twig?  What was she
singing?  Yes folks, it was:

‘I WILL
SURVIVE’    

“Hello?  Are you
there?  Linda?  Hello, hello?”

Happy Birthday
. . .

It had looked like it was going
to be a really good night.  We had a 50
^th
birthday party
booked.  The family, who were good, regular customers, had been decorating
the lounge all afternoon and it was spectacular.  There were masses of
helium balloons, streamers and party poppers everywhere.  I knew the
cleaner would go fecking ballistic in the morning and demand double time, but
hey ho!

The sandwiches were cut, but not
curled!  No one had burned the sausage rolls and we managed to get the
cat’s teeth marks off the chicken drumsticks.  Guests were arriving
bearing gifts, all well scrubbed and ready to party.  I had no misgivings
about this crowd as I knew them well.  Maybe I took my eye off the ball a
little, and gave them the benefit of the doubt.  Not clever, there was
BOOZE involved.

The karaoke was belting out the
old favourite ‘I Did it My Way’ sung by the latest Frank Sinatra wannabe! 
Shame she hadn’t shaved and changed her socks.  Drinks were flowing, tills
were ringing and I was in the kitchen cutting the birthday cake when I was
suddenly aware of the silence; that eerie silence when all you can hear is the
music from ‘High Noon’ ringing in your ears.

The two adversaries had been
staring in silence at each other for the past three hours, not a word had been
spoken.  Many, many years previously, in fact probably at the 21
^st
birthday party, one had inadvertently spilled the other’s drink and committed
the cardinal sin of not ‘getting them in again.’   Sacrilege in a
Scots pub. 

Suddenly one of the two jumped
up, stared malevolently into the other’s face and with the battle-cry of the
wronged—

“
Aw, fuck it!”—and knocked
the other clean out. 

Then the party really began, tables,
chairs, drinks, handbags

and hair extensions went up in
the air, and all the while the karaoke belting out ‘Send in the Clowns.’ 
Sometimes I just give up!

“Great party!” shouts one wit as
I propelled him bodily out into the night air.

It looked like a scene from the
O.K.
Corral
and the Indians had gained more than a few scalps.  The
birthday boy was under a pile of chairs; snoring his head off, dead to the
world.  He was loaded onto a ‘legless table’ by a couple of his ‘legless
relations’ and carted off.

“SAY GOODBYE TO THE DEPOSIT!” I
roared after them.

“Cheers hen, brilliant
night!  See ya tomorrow.”

Bloody numbskull’s.  And
then spying the DJ, I let him have it too. “SHUT THE FUCK UP and pack your gear
away ya eejit.  The party’s over and don’t think you’re getting paid
either!”