There is no secret to running a good pub
IT'S hard to run a good pub these days. The brewers are ruthless. The beer's expensive. The regulars often are not all that regular any more.
But it can be done. Consider the case of the team running the Olde Bull Inn at Barton Mills. They've won a regional contest in the National Pub Awards and they may well go on to bigger things.
But the success of Wayne Starling, Cheryl Hickman and Sonia Hickman rest chiefly on pleasing local people while luring in the passing trade. Their secret is no secret: it is simply service. Doing what's wanted when it's wanted.
It sounds so simple yet not every ailing boozer has learned the lesson.
Could it be that some landlords, licensees and managers cry too easily into their own ale and blame everything from the breathalyser to bingo for their own failings?
MP Richard Spring has closely studied the case of Tess Henry and supports her probably doomed resistance to being sent back to Australia from Exning where she cares for her dying mother.
Like many of us, Mr Spring wants a tough and rigorous immigration system but he calls this case "madness."
I wonder how many other cases involving honest people less well able to express themselves get lost in our tough and rigorous system.
That's the problem with all sweeping statutory measures: as soon as you start studying the detail you realise victims are getting mashed up in your machinery.
Once it was a word seldom said in even the most candid obituaries: dementia.
We were merely told the dear departed had "suffered a long illness".
But I have noticed from time to time in Journal obituaries lately (there was an example last week), and in the case of Carol Thatcher while her mother, Lady Thatcher, is still with us, that family members have shared with us the sad fact that a loved one often ceased to make much sense in their later days.
Not only is there no harm in this telling of the brutal truth but there is something helpful in it, too.
A little like cancer, it is only when we know about how often a disease strikes and whom it affects that we as a society can sensibly decide how to spend medical money on research and care.
The less often we are mealy-mouthed, the more likely we are to find solutions.
On balance, our athletes in the Olympics were wonderfully sensible, modest and charmingly down-to-earth in their comments after winning medals in Beijing. And the losers were just as nice.
But my gold medal for charm and honesty goes to Mildenhall's pedal-power princess Victoria Pendleton who, when asked what her gold medal would do for her future, replied that she was hoping for "at least a nice new frock".
By proving you can be a superwoman on the track and an old-fashioned girl you can see why she was called Victoria: she's a world beater at home and abroad.
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Friday 25 May 2012
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