Life Behind Bars (8 page)

One night I was chatting with
Alan, the chap next door and he jokingly said we must have upset Esther the
ghost, because lately in the morning when they opened up, she had been on the
rampage and things were scattered along the passageway.  This was the
passage which ran the full length of our building.  If she walked through
the wall, she would be standing in my pool room.  The building next door
had at one time been a cinema and legend had it, she was an usherette who had
never clocked off.  

Now I neither believe, nor
disbelieve, in ghosts.  I can only tell you what happened.  
Around about closing time, as I said, the door would mysteriously close and
there would be the most overpowering smell of Jeyes Fluid— yes— Jeyes
Fluid.  Nothing else; just a closed door and the smell.  We obviously
weren’t as interesting as the carpet shop next door.  That was, until the
refurbishment.

Six months after we moved in, the
brewery agreed to do a major refurbishment which would mean closing for
approximately six weeks and amongst the changes, the pool room was about to
become our kitchen.  Esther was going to be upset.

During the construction of the
kitchen the men on site were spooked constantly, with things going missing and
turning up in the oddest of places.  Lights went on and off and lots of
other strange things happened.  Alan next door, however, had little or no
activity.  I think for once, we were more interesting.

The refurbishment was complete
and we now boasted a fabulous new kitchen, complete with dry goods
cupboard.  Coincidentally, this cupboard had been built just where we had
almost caught sight of her in the past.  She was in her element. 
Lots of things to move and examine—and she did. 

At first the girls were a bit
scared and it was rather spooky, but they soon got used to it and would yell.

“Esther get me some flour!” 
Or sugar or whatever.

When they were busy, and I
promise you this is no lie, on more than one occasion whatever had been asked
for would appear.  There was one recurring incident, however, that defied
explanation.

There were three shelves running
round the inside of the cupboard and the bottom and top were very spacious, but
the middle was not.  All our flour products were kept in large containers,
which fitted easily into two of the shelves but were almost impossible to fit
in the middle.  Guess what we had to do almost every morning before
beginning work?  Yes, we had to prise all these containers off the middle
shelf.  This also happened frequently during service which was infuriating
as we had no time to beggar about.

Now I know most ghosts walk
around with their heads tucked under their arm, and others rattle chains; ours
seemed to be content moving boxes of fish batter from shelf to shelf; not very
interesting?  Well when it’s your fish batter it is!

You may well be right, maybe
someone got up every morning and battered these bins into place, maybe someone
was playing tricks on us, but I know what I know and I was sad to leave her
when we moved on.

Is there anybody there???

The Inn was an old blacksmiths forge
with four workers cottages linked together.  They had been built in the
late 1700’s for migrant workers (yes, they had them back then.) 
Conditions would have been difficult and there must have been countless deaths
over the years.  It is not surprising that sightings of ghosts and
spectres were numerous.  As I said I neither believe nor disbelieve, I can
only repeat what others have reported.

Unlike friendly Esther in Tweedy’s,
the inhabitants of the County were far more threatening and frightening, and
different ghosts haunted different parts of the building.  Maybe they had
territorial boundaries, I wonder what happened if one crossed into another,
they could hardly murder each other!

So we have established that these
ghosts were not the Caspar type figures.  There was a Grey Lady (there’s
always a Grey lady).  A little girl who was always crying, (now there’s a
change,) and assorted wailer’s, grinders and gnashers of teeth.  However,
the man who spent his time in the function room, formerly the old forge, was
definitely the most frightening and the one spoken about the most.

It was said to be the local
blacksmith and during the lead up to the Battle of Preston Pans he had been
commandeered by the English army, led by Sir John Cope, to provide weapons for
his army.  Being a loyal Scot, he resisted all attempts to make him work
and eventually he was murdered by two English soldiers, who held him down in
the cooling trough.  Now whether that story bears any resemblance to the
truth, I cannot tell.

Several staff had experienced a
feeling of being crowded or oppressed.  They would suddenly feel a
presence closing in on them and then feel as though something was leaning
heavily on them.  This was experienced by lots of staff and also by a
customer.  Normally I would put it down to alcohol, but this customer was
a ‘designated driver’ and she had been drinking soft drinks all evening.

Having forgotten her mobile
phone, she had gone back to collect it.  Alone in the function suite and
leaning over the table, she thought a member of staff had come in. 
Turning to speak there was no one there.  She then had the sensation that
someone, or something, was trying to hold her down, and she actually had a
slight burn on her forehead from candles which had still been alight on the
table.  She was extremely frightened and it took some time to calm her
down. 

Due to the number of sightings
throughout the building and also because it was good publicity, we arranged to
have an exorcism or ‘cleansing’ carried out.  Now I don’t know what I
expected, but there certainly was no one ‘pinned to the ceiling,’ nor ‘heads
round the wrong way.’  The television was still showing the footie and
there was no mention of ‘Caroline stepping away from the white light. ’ 

A fairly ordinary looking
gentleman walked through the building swinging some sort of incense burner and
muttering.  He got to the back door, held out his hand for the money and
left!  Well I can tell you— was I bloody mad!  I thought I had been
well and truly cleansed, cleansed of a hundred quid!  I marched up to the
forge and dared
that fucking ghost to reappear. 

Strangely enough his presence has
never been felt since.  Maybe the cleansing did work, or maybe it was me!

K. P . . . Nuts!

Over the years I have had
countless kitchen porters (K. P.’s) and they have usually had one thing in
common, apart from drink; they are thick.  C’mon, you’d have to be, to
work in those conditions for half the pay everyone else gets.  But one
shines out above all the others.

Andy worked for us for probably
ten years.  He had been a Master Baker (try saying that quickly,) but
developed an allergy to flour.  Personally I think he developed an allergy
to the hours, they interfered with his drinking.  Whatever the reason, he
came to join our happy little band.   Another misfit in the mix. 

Now that I remember, he came to
fill in for his wife, who had a major hangover, certainly worse than his, and
she was on a final, final warning.  I think he just stayed and she went
off somewhere else to work.

He could have single-handedly
kept an ambulance-chasing lawyer in silk ties for a year.  He was the most
accident prone person I have ever met.  During a routine environmental
health visit, the officer asked to see our accident book.  She nearly had
a fit and accused us of making it up.  It took some convincing we had
not.  She advised me to sack him as he was a liability.  Well, I
would have had no kitchen staff left if they were sacked on that count!

On a typical day, he put a 12lb
turkey back into the freezer and it promptly fell out and knocked him
out.  Christ, the egg on his forehead looked like it had been lain by the
turkey.  He skidded and slipped around the kitchen like Bambi on ice and
would grab anyone and anything to steady himself.  It was not advisable to
let him near knives, but sometimes you had to.  So at frequent times
throughout the day you would hear the plaintive cry.

 “Where’s the plasters?
 I’m bleeding again.” 

Any other member of staff having
a mishap and requiring plasters were invariably out of luck.  He once had
so many about his person he looked like a giant Smurf (kitchen plasters are
blue.)

He tried to stop smoking and
bought a months supply of patches.  They didn’t work because:

  a) he was immune to the
patch theory, he had been wearing so many for so long and

  b) he usually had them
round a cut or bruise somewhere else on his body.

Like most kitchens, on busy days
you invariably run out of supplies and the K.P. is the gopher.  With Andy
you had to be precise to the point of ridicule.  One Saturday we had had a
real run on large Yorkshire puddings stuffed with roast beef and gravy. 
To complete the orders, I hurriedly sent Andy off to get more supplies. 
He was away for some time and I was getting concerned.  Back he came
carrying a large Woolworth’s bag which he emptied onto my work station. 
Out fell a dozen family size bars of Cadbury’s Fruit and Nut; we stood open
mouthed at his purchases.

“I’m sorry” he said “I couldn’t
get giant Yorkies!”

Quizzical . . .

The average pub quiz is a bit of
fun on a dreary winter’s evening which no one takes very seriously and is an
excuse to get away from the wife and kids.  That is except for the
‘Quizzers.’  These are teams of intellectuals who never miss a match and are
normally sourced from the Social Work Department or the local primary
school.  Their teams have Latin names that not even they can pronounce,
and they consume half a lager and a packet of crisps between them, that is
until they win first prize when it’s brandy and coke all round.  So intent
are they on their quizzing, that if a particular pub caters for the hoi poloi,
they will not deign to enter.

So, most of our quizzes were
beneath their contempt which suited us fine.  My punters had very few
brain cells between them.  Some of them even thought a GCSE was a make of
washing machine, and by the second half were usually too pissed to write. 
They had team names like ‘The Dogs Bollocks’ and ‘All Fannies are Round.’ 
Referring of course to that well known malapropism by Johnnie Craddock.

But we did cross paths; you see
we were in the League.  How we ever qualified I will never know. 
Maybe the last incumbent slept with someone of importance.  Perhaps money
had changed hands.  Or maybe, they just needed to make up the
numbers.  Whatever the reason, we were in the League and there were
inter-pub quizzes into which we were obliged to enter a team.  These
quizzes were held monthly in a variety of establishments and they were catered.

Now we were definitely fourth
division in the quiz tables, but when it came to the catering we were
absolutely top of the Premier League and thus the only reason ‘The Nil Desperandum’s’
and the ‘Quo Quid Pro’s’ would grace us with their presence.

I never had a problem putting a
team together on a monthly basis.  In fact, it was a harder job keeping
most of them out.

Then of course there were the
groupies.  Each team had its supporters.  Most of whom were very well
behaved and so excited at the prospect of maybe taking part that they spent
most of the time running back and fro to the toilets.  Not so with my
motley crew, oh they were excited all right, and yes they spent the time doing
the toilet run, but for different reasons.

They would roar the answer to
their team-mates, the fact that it was usually wrong proved no deterrent. 
As for support, by closing time every one of them needed support.  The
fuckers could never stand.  We were frowned upon!  Now I take shit
from no one and I certainly wasn’t taking it from a load of camel-toed,
sandal-wearing hippies who thought they were better than us.  The fact
they were had nothing to do with it.  I had decided the next match held at
home, my team would win.  But how?

Honestly, I couldn’t get anyone
with as much as an ‘O’ level for love nor money.  I tried importing from
other pubs.  No one would come, not even on the promise of a fabulous
running buffet.  I was getting desperate.  Then I came up with ‘the
Plan.’  Google; I was going to Google and I came up with a devilish plot
to avoid suspicion.

For two days before the quiz I
had a run through with my team and cohorts and it went swimmingly. 
Basically I had a five man team who would take part and I had a five man team
who would cheat.  Sound okay?

This is how it would work.  Simplicity
itself.  What would happen was; each cheat was numbered and they would
come through, ask the question, go into the toilet and by the time they
returned I would have the answer which they would then pass to the team. 
We ran through the plan time and time again and had it working to perfection.

The catering was par excellence,
the bar was warm and inviting and I had a winning team.  The evening
started absolutely to plan.  The system was working.  A cheat would
come past me in the kitchen, go into either the gents or ladies, do a swift
turn around, come past me, get the answer and pass it on as directed. 
Round one full points, round two full points, round three full points, then
things began to go wrong.

What had I not counted on? 
The cheating bastards were getting pissed!  Cheat number one rolled into
the toilet, met his mate and stood blethering with him about the job they’d
just finished, missed his cue.

Cheat number two got cheat number
one’s answer.  Then number three came in, joined in number one’s chat; he
missed his cue and got number four’s answer.  And to top it all cheat
number five (Sharon) took so long doing her hair she missed a whole bloody
category.  What a fucking shambles.  Round four, only one point.