[OLD STEVE] [WORLD OF THE CONTENT] [THE RE-WRITTEN LIST] [LEVELS OF CONSCIOUSNESS] [THE THREE LEVELS]
CHAPTER 43.
They All Heap It On.
MY BIOGRAPHY.
1. Most Draymen, the guys who come with the wagons and deliver the barrels of Beer, are reasonably sound but like with everything else you always got 'Some.'
The little guy who was reputed to be the Union Rep and I suspect the only reason why he survived, and who you dare not let go anywhere alone, in the Pub, as he would steal something. The same guy who always did the paper work and signed everything with an abbreviated first name, as I suspect he couldn't write his full name, or if he could remember it, it would take him too long to write it down. He was always there with the only dray team that had full bottles stolen out of crates, while they were on the pavement, outside, waiting to be delivered down the cellar and who, as a result, was always obliged to give you a credit note for non-existent broken bottles and where the cabin of their wagon was awash with their plunder and you were not supposed to notice all that.
Then the big numb bugger whose only value was his strength. He rolled off a full 36-gallon barrel and let it bounce on the pavement. Then he rolled off a second that bounced off the first and landed squarely on my unopened trap door. It took the solid door and its entire surrounding framework straight down into the cellar and smashed dozens of empty bottles, in their crates, all waiting to be sent back.
Away they went leaving me to build a barrier of empty barrels, that they should have taken away, round the hole to prevent people falling down and to make arrangements to have it made secure for that night as to have left it would have been an open invitation to the local 'tea leaves' to come in and empty the place.
When I rang Brewery Transport and asked them what the position was they said they would have to look into it and come back to me. In between thimes my insurance said, 'No. It's their property.' This was not helping and I had to get it made right straight away and the lad who did it for me naturally wanted paying and as he was a customer of mine and was doing me a favour, I paid him.
2. Weeks later and where nothing had happened, unfortunately for him, in walked the Area Manager. He knew nothing about any trap door and I should have written to him (as if doing that would have done me any good) and not gone to Transport but he would sort it out there and then, using my phone: no his own mobile.
3. Transport knew nothing about it. Nothing had been reported to them and they did not know who had taken the original phone call. It could have been anyone in the depot. There was a break while this guy, at the other end, enquired further. When he rang back it was to say that Transport could not find any records of there having even been a delivery into Scarborough, let alone a report of an accident, on the day in question and why had I not taken a written and signed statement from the draymen, where some at best found it difficult to sign anything with more than 'Sid,' admitting liability, at the time? As far as they were concerned that was the end of it and if I wanted to take legal action I was free to do so although they would take a dim view of it. All as if to say it could not have been their men and I was a lying bastard. That same Dray Team never came to my pub again. The whole lot of them were rotten from top to bottom and I was a leaseholder, one of their special tenants or so they kept telling me. God knows how they treated everyone else?
4. One day during the week, and lunchtime, during the period when we were still opening at lunchtime and while minding my own business and whilst waiting for my first customer, the door opened and in came this tall 'Suit.' Having shown me his ID and establishing that he was a Health Inspector, he went on to explain that he had come to inspect the premises opposite but the person he had arranged to meet had failed to turn up, so instead of making it a wasted journey he would take advantage and inspect my property. He had no paperwork with him, appertaining to us that is and id not have to give prior warning of a visit, so he accepted a soft drink while he sat at a table and filled out his forms. He wanted all sorts of personal information about who lived there, how many staff we employed and if we had people staying with us? So first things first! Anyone who has been around these types know that a lot of what they try and collect is passed onto other agencies, although they always try to deny it, but that never seems to stop follow up visits from the DHSS, the VAT people and the Inland Revenue very shortly after someone like this character has been around.
So for his benefit, only the wife and I lived and worked there with no staff at the moment and that was very true for that particular lunchtime.
5. He looked behind the bar, on all the shelves, on all work surfaces and in all the cupboards and said he was pleased with what he saw. Then he went into the kitchen and looking up at a skylight, in the roof, noticed stain marks in one corner, which he said, was from a leak. I calmly suggested that it might only be from condensation and he agreed but went on to add that what ever it was it could drip down onto food and because of that he was immediately closing down my kitchen and it could not be used again until he had inspected it and approved the repairs. I could feel the red glow coming into my eyes. As if things weren't bad enough, this bastard was going to stop me selling food. At that point the door, which led to our private quarters, opened and my wife let our two dogs through to go out in the back yard for exercise. He beamed. Did I not know that dogs are not allowed in a food preparation area? To which my wife, bless her and not knowing who he was, told him in no uncertain manner that if he thought she was going to walk half way round a very large building, particularly in bad weather, just to let her dogs go into her own backyard, then he had another think coming. He made no reply and asked to see the cellar. In-between times I told my wife, at his insistence, who he was and what had happened over the kitchen.
'No problem,' was her reply and she went on to explain that until the necessary work was done she would make sandwiches in the other kitchen upstairs.
Now wait for it, for the arrogance, irony and downright stupidity of the man and the situation.
'No you can't. Not when there is a kitchen down here specifically for that purpose,' he retorted, his ugly, deadpan face not altering one bit.
I was thinking to myself, please don't hit him dear. We both know he is an arsehole as are most of those attracte to this type of work. Instead she said, 'But I use the kitchen upstairs to cook for guests.'
Wait for it. 'Good, so I will go look at it but you still can't use it when there is a kitchen down here specifically to service this area.'
To which my wife enquired, 'But what if there were no kitchen down here? What if we closed it altogether?'
'That would be a different issue and would have to be considered separately. But what you have now is two kitchens serving two separate areas.'
We went upstairs and into the large, well laid out and equipped, catering kitchen. He looked round before enquiring where our own domestic kitchen was? He was told this was it, and bugger me, if he didn't go on to say that a catering kitchen cannot be used as a private domestic kitchen. My wife walked away at that point, totally disgusted, leaving me alone with this guy before we went back downstairs, where he asked again to see the cellar.
He stood and looked at the 'empty bottle' store at the bottom of the staircase. Then went into the bottle store, where full bottles were kept prior to being carried upstairs for use on the bar, before finally passing through into the main beer cellar.
He poked around, inspecting such things as the delivery chute, which was closed off by protective wooden doors, said little and asked no questions. Back upstairs he thanked me for my time, said he would send me a copy of his report, make out a closure notice and pin it on the kitchen door. He asked me if I had any drawing pins and me, daft bastard, rummaged about and found him four. He then reminded me that it was a punishable offence to remove it and that he would submit that part of his report, that covered the kitchen, first, so that I would know exactly what was required, do the work, advise him and then if satisfied he would come and remove the notice. I asked if there was an appeals procedure that would at least allow me to carry on for the moment. No way where food is concerned. If a Health Inspector says, 'Halt,' the law says stop there and then and that is it.
6. For the first day, after the visit, anyone wanting to use the toilets, had to pass the kitchen door to get there and saw the notice and most asked questions about it on their return. Fed up of giving explanations and the fact that it was round the 'block' in seconds, that our kitchens were closed because of cock-roaches the size of cats and grease inches thick and all green mouldy and pans, with stale food in them, that had not been washed out in months, my wife suggested that we should not take it down but cover the official notice up. I rummaged about upstairs until I found a large coloured poster, advertising someone's bottled beer and we pinned that over it but, as always, it was too late, the word, as they say, was out. The phone rang and the local newspaper asked what it was all about. I told them we had a leaking roof, which we were repairing and the Health Inspector happened to come in and see it and if they printed one single word that would be the end of their tea-time drinking in my establishment and a statement would be made to a rival paper saying that all their staff had been banned for un-gentlemanly behavior and drinking to excess during working hours. Some of them drifted away after that. A loss to both sides.
7. When the Health Inspector's report came, not as promised with the kitchen part in advance of the rest, but as a whole document, it was about half an inch thick and had a letter attached to it that basically said something to the effect, 'That on reflection of the report, as a whole, to carry out some of the work maybe quite time consumong and costly.' Therefore to make things easier, it went on to say, he had decided to give me two whole weeks before he came back to inspect the kitchen and a further six weeks to carry out the work in the cellar and other areas.
8. I sat and read the report and couldn't believe my eyes at what was included in there and what this man wanted doing and later was almost reduced to tears when I showed it to a builder friend, who had previously done a lot of excellent work for me, and asked him if he could do all the work, in the time allowed, and how much it would cost? He toured round and looked at everything before he told me that if I did the labouring for him and did as much as I possibly could for myself, he felt he should be able to do it, in the time, and at a cost of around £3,000.
9. As the builder put it, 'These bastards and people like them are shit hot at spending your money and all because they probably had no toys as kids or the wife now regularly kneels on their knackers.' His quote not mine although I approve of the sentiment.
10. What had I done to deserve all that and where was the money coming from? It came and had to come from the same place as all the rest, out of the till and the fact that there was insufficient in the till meant everyone else either didn't get paid or had to wait for their money. But for how long would they accept that? Not as long as you might think and certainly not as long as we hoped for. The Bank was evil and was by far the worst. Letters at £25 a time, adding to our already substantial debts flew round like confetti. 'We have stopped this, you are not getting that; you must deposit this by so and so; you must come in and see us,' and so it went on until it reached a stage that they and everyone else, made it so bad that we dreaded the post coming through the letterbox, or we jumped a mile when the phone rang and I certainly did not sleep at night. I did however learn to cope, often aided by more booze than was healthy but which blocked out a lot of the pain, with the bouts of diarrhoea and the constant inner trembling, the gout and headaches, while at the same time it was amazing how quickly news of our dilemma and circumstances seemed to get round. People you didn't expect to see or very rarely saw, would come in and after a few pleasantries would enquire if there was any chance you could settle their account, by cash preferably and also to point out that due to circumstances beyond their control, lying prats, the company had decided that they would still supply but sadly there would be no more credit or at least no more, and certainly no more deliveries unless by cash on delivery, until all outstanding invoices had been settled. This had the same effect as that imposed by the brewery legislation; it was impossible to stock up to cover fluctuations such as for Bank Holidays, Xmas and the New Year and all for what?
Well to start with a Health Inspector but he was not the first, although he was one of the worst, along with the Brewery, the Bank Manager, the Inland Revenue, the VAT Inspector, the Electricity Company and nearly every other supplier and contractor that I can think of. But let us, just for a brief moment, go back to that pillock of a Health Inspector.
11. He would give us two weeks for the kitchen and a further six weeks for the rest, as long as we complied with and achieved the standards laid out in his report.
12. The kitchen with either a minor leak or condensation stains coming from an overhead skylight. No problem according to the report. Remove it completely and replace it with a double glazed PVC unit, make good the surrounding areas, checking the outside roof for possible leaks and repaint the ceiling with some specified type of paint. Ridiculous and totally unnecessary despite the fact that it would 'only' cost a few hundred pounds that I did not have. But did it end there? Did it hell. The floor was concrete and the lino covering it had to be removed and the concrete surface had to be overlaid with a specified compound, that when laid formed a curve where it had to be moulded, for several inches, up the walls. There was dirt and grease in the joints between the tiles and there was evidence of cracking on the glazed surfaces of these tiles. You or I would have had difficulty in finding it but that didn't matter, as the problem would be eliminated when all the tiles were removed, as intructed, and replaced with larger ones, that this time would not go part way up the wall, as before, but would go all the way up to the ceiling. But not before all the work surfaces had been removed and replaced with Stainless Steel ones. All the cupboards would require re-painting on the inside and all shelf surfaces covered with Formica. Between the actual kitchen and the outside back door was a small area where stood an Ice Making Machine and also above that were several shelves on which a variety of things were stored. Either the Ice Machine or the shelves and their contents had to be found an alternative site, as heat from the machine and the storage of consumables could not go together. Consumables; toilet rolls, cleaning materials and bit and bats for my car, such as oil and windscreen washer, polish, air-fresheners, spare Vacuum cleaner bags and unused dish cloths, dusters and clean towels for use in the bar. If I were to say there were no alternative sites, conveniently located, for either, I hope you will believe me, for there was not. But on top of that it would, according to the report, after having decided which should go and which should stay, be necessary to construct and install a door between this area and the actual kitchen. But it did not specify where the Deep Freezers, on the one side and the Ice Machine, if it stayed, which it would have to, as it was plumbed into the services, water, waste and electricity etc, on the other, had to go, so that a door would open and close. Finally, as it was understood and included in the report, that the back door was often used and could be left open, particularly in hot weather or busy periods, a Fly Screen would have to be fitted on the outside and remain shut when the back door was open. The passage of dogs or any other family pets and none essential visitors or employees were banned from passing, for whatever reason, through the kitchen area. So that put the dustbins out of bounds.
13 I read the report through several times and when the anger, cold shivers and trembling subsided slightly I decided I would appeal, a point that I could do so being made quite clear at the end of the document. I read through the specific section several times. My complaint, according to them, should be specific and form the basis of my appeal. Specific: mine was a general complaint, no. a global complaint, that the whole thing was a heap of crap and not only outrageous but totally unfair and way over the top. So I decided, in the first place, to ring and try and talk to someone. The guy I spoke to and who claimed to be the boss of the Inspector dealing with my case was familiar with the report and would look into it and come back to me. He did with a very polite letter that stated he was surprised and in which he also stated was of great credit to me, that his man had found so little in light of the period of time since their last inspection and that I must realise that not only are these inspections necessary to protect the public but are used as an opportunity to upgrade establishments to conform to the ever increasing demands of Health and Safety. The twist in the tail came right at the end when it stated that if my appeal was going to be a general one and did not relate to a specific issue, I could and should request and only expect to get, a re-inspection but there would be no guarantee what the outcome would be and how was I supposed to interpret that? Bring us back and we will crawl all over you? Sod that!
14. As cost was the biggest issue, for us, not them, we decided that all they could do, if the work in the kitchen was not done, was insist it remained closed and although not ideal was a better alternative to having problems, from them,over the cellar. I had a word with the guy, my builder friend, who had offered to do the work and we came to the arrangement that if I paid for all the materials, which would be purchased as we needed them, paid him, in cash, for his services on a weekly basis and then I acted as labourer and skivvy we would start straight away. Now contrary to the common conception that all a landlord does is have a quiet drink with his mates in the bar, I ended up with my wife running the actual pub, while I did all the usual cellar work, the administration and tried, to the best of my ability, to keep the wolves, thieves and arseholes from the door whilst filling out the rest of my eighteen hour day working in the cellar, as a labourer and painter and decorator, for a bloody Health Inspector.
15. As already mentioned, this bloody report was about half an inch thick and ninety percent concentrated on the cellar. What they wanted was incredible and the individual items so numerous that I am sure I have forgotten a large proportion of them and in any case to list and detail them would be very boring, so sufficient to outline the major issues if only to give some idea of how irrational these people were and the devastating effect it had on us.
16. To be effective a beer cellar has to be basically cold and damp. This can be achieved in numerous ways and these would naturally vary from pub to pub, but in our case it was successfully achieved, probably since the pub was built, by the fact that the cellar was well below ground and cold, had some problems, though not detrimental problems, associated with damp and seepage, a Cooling System controlled by thermostats and a compressor unit to assist it, located outside the building, at the back. Then simply spraying water, from a hosepipe, onto the walls and floor, created the necessary damp effect required to keep good beer.
17. The building was very old and the staircase leading down to the beer cellar and bottle stores was narrow with a right angle bend in it half way down. As nothing could be done about this or an alternative suggested in the report, it would have to stay but would have to have a handrail fitted down either side, which according to me and anyone else with an iota of common sense, even down one side would then have made it almost impossible to go up or down carrying anything of size, for example crates of bottles etc for use in the bar. Also the stair treads would have to be covered with a, specified, none slip surface and metal edges attached. Two lights, much larger than the single adequate one, fitted in the ceiling above and of a specified safety type were also required, before finally the whole staircase area had to be painted white, with the specified anti-mould paint.
18. At the bottom of the staircase and directly on the right hand side was an open area where all empty bottles were transported, down the narrow staircase, and left in large containers from where they would be sorted and placed in the appropriate crates prior to return to either the brewery or independent supplier. When a delivery was due these crates, into which the bottles had been sorted, would be pushed across the floor and into the main cellar where the trap, which led out to the pavement above, was located. Nothing wrong with this area, according to the report, providing it was painted out and empty cardboard boxes removed as soon as they were empty.
19. Along from there and also on the right hand side, was another area where full bottles, in crates or cardboard boxes, were stored prior to being taken upstairs for sale in the bar. The only difference between this area and the one next to it was the fact that one stored full bottles and the other empties and I would have thought that more contamination would have developed from within the open empties than the full sealed ones, but not according to our friends and their report.
The red brick 'set' floor, in the full bottle storage area, had to be dug up and relayed in smooth concrete prior to painting, with floor paint, and the areas where the crates would be stacked outlined with coloured safety lines painted on the floor. After that, areas designated as walkways should have nothing stacked or stored in them. If the silly, health inspector, man had come five years before, when the pub was heaving, he would have had difficulty getting down into the cellar let alone have been able to designate specific walkways. The outer walls and the central pillar supports, for the floors above, had to be smooth cement rendered prior to painting with anti-fungal paint. But prior to rendering, the outside walls had to have a thin corrugated aluminium sheeting placed and fastened over them to prevent any damp, from outside, getting through. The ceiling joists, for the floor above, had to be under-drawn and again painted, with strip lights, which included protective shielding, set in flush with the surface, so as not to reduce the height in anyway. All exposed pipe-work and electrical wiring, of which there was a vast amount, going in all directions, had to be boxed in and marked with yellow and black striped tape if below six feet from the ground. That was all of it as the ceilings in this area were only six feet from the floor and I and many others had to stoop all the time when in the cellar.
20. The beer cellar, to the left and furthest away from the staircase had also to have the floor ripped up because there was evidence of a crack, that goodness knows when, had been filled in and all had to be relayed. The walls rendered, with the aluminium sheeting sandwiched in it, and the ceiling under-drawn and the same protected, flush lighting set in, all the same as that in the bottle stores. The drain, set in the middle of the floor had to have a different, specified, cover over it.
Barrels, in order to be workable, have to be set on racks and by far the best for this were the substantial solid wood ones that we had. They absorbed shock and didn't disturb other barrels when their neighbours further down the rack were either removed, because they were empty, or loaded on at delivery times. They had to come out, according to the report, and be replaced with modern metal ones which from a hygiene point of view may have been much better but from the point of view of handling and dispensing good beer, just short of useless.
21. Where the water supply, for the hosepipe, among other things, was located, necessitated the hosepipe laying and draping across barrels, so it had to be moved to prevent that. Anything and everything other than barrels and the stainless steel buckets, for returns, had to be removed and stored elsewhere. Where, of course, was not specified? Behind the toilet door comes to mind.
22. Nothing was said about all the electric and gas meters and their piping and wiring and the dust and cobwebs, that were all mounted on a large panel along one wall. No doubt the powers that be, the health department, did not want to upset the big boys, who provided these services, in case they got a challenge and stand off they couldn't handle, but we, well we were much less powerful, so we could completely remove the inner doors, next to them, that opened onto the chute, that fed down from the trap above, set in at pavement level and replace them with something more solid and substantial and also that would fold further back when open and in use. We could also reline the chute and set new barrel guides and side protectors. We could also completely remove the trap door and frame and replace it with a metal one at street level. All in the report and required under updated Health and Safety.
23. The soft drinks dispenser and its substantial chilling equipment, including the storage rack for replacement containers, held in reserve, would also have to be removed and all placed somewhere else, in a place of our choice, as long as it was in the full bottle storage area, next door. As would all the large gas bottles, their racks, gauges and piping, used in beer and other drinks dispensing. They too would have to be found a home anywhere but in the actual beer cellar and as with the soft drinks equipment ended up in the bottle store, following a great deal of rewiring and plumbing, some of which, fortunately from the cost point of view, was the responsibility of the brewery. Contact with the brewery over this work and moving their equipment prompted a poor response from them and did little to improve the relationship between us, as they proceeded to send letters expressing their disappointment that I had allowed a situation to develop that prompted all this attention from the Health Inspectors. In fact they were very worried that I might have 'created a situation' whereby the health people may become interested in more of their pubs and what they didn't say, but which was very obvious, was that most of these pubs were managed or tenanted houses and therefore their, the breweries, responsibility. Either way they certainly offered me no backing and even said that if I failed in anyway then they would have no choice but to take a very dim view and take whatever action was open to them. From there on my relationship with the brewery became none existant, at my instigation as much as theirs.
24. The fourth and final area of the cellar was used as a Spirit Store and general store and although the insurance people insisted it had a lock on the door, the one fitted was not very substantial, nor was the door and had probably been there as long as the building had stood on the site, in excess of a hundred years. No problem for the Health and Safety, rip it out, including its casing, that was loose down one side, and replace it with a door that prevents less cross contamination. It would not have been so bad if it had been a proper storage area, but it was not, or it wasn't at that time. It was a junk hole and the large racks of shelving that once held a couple of hundred bottles of spirits now held a handful of unpopular cocktail mixers. Spirits bought from the brewery or other outside suppliers had long been a thing of the past and the standard practice had become one where you went to the local supermarket and bought, as and when required, at much cheaper prices. The breweries could do nothing about it or they chose not to do anything about it, perhaps, because it left them that little bit freer to concentrate on putting beer in cans. There was no longer anything like a decent wholesale supplier unless you were prepared to pay them that little bit over the odds in exchange for credit and my credit was very definitely drying up in every direction.
25. You might have just thought that it all ended there but you would be wrong. We were also told that if the kitchen upstairs was to be used for catering, i.e. for paying guests. What paying guests? They were also very much a thing of the past following the overall decline in the tourist industry brought about by changing trends and Scarborough Corporation's hidden agendas to kill it dead. Then we would have to provide an additional and separate kitchen for our own private use.
Also, and in order to rub more salt in the wounds, the floor surface, at the back of the bar, had to be removed and replaced with a specified none slip surface in which no joins were allowed. Our bar was long and 'L' shaped so I still shudder at the thought of the size of the square piece we had to buy and the large corner that had to be cut out and wasted in order to get the 'L' shape required. The allowance for the off-cut, offered by the supplier, being 'peanuts.' It was probably all in my mind but even they seemed to sense our hopeless position and take advantage particularly when they claimed it was standard practice, when working in Pubs, to quote a price that was for cash up front when they had finished and before they moved off the site.
26. When everything was finished, all boxed in and painted up, the eight weeks and thick end of £3,000 had gone and I was on my knees with both worry and fatigue. The long, tall streak of piss came back. He was shown the kitchen, where nothing had been done, and told that we would no longer be doing food from there. We did but that was long after he had gone. He told us that if we changd our minds then we would have to do the work and inform him at the same time, in-case regulations and legislation had changed and further modifications were required. We told him the same applied to the kitchen upstairs that would be continued to be used as a private kitchen and I declined his request to 'have another look' on the grounds that it was no longer a commercial area. His eyes lit up at the sight of the cellar, all white and gleaming, and in less than two minutes we were back upstairs and he was leaving with a promise to send me a letter stating that he was satisfied with what had been done and reminding me of what was still to do if ever I changed my mind over the catering facilities. Do you know? I am still waiting for that letter but had dozens from the brewery reminding me that they wanted a photo copy of it when it came, But then even they went quiet after I suggested they approach the local area health office directly and make their own request. Shit scared of attracting attention, they were.
27. As far as I am aware no other pub in the area was visited and subjected to the same treatment and I have always wondered how it came about that they picked on me and who put them up to it? They did not visit the premises opposite, around that time, which was their original excuse for coming to me. No doubt we will never know, but let them and all the rest of them, rot in hell, for I did nothing but try hard to make an honest, decent living and to this day still believe that if they had left me alone it would all have worked out for everyone. But they didn't and those that might have helped or could have helped, didn't, they all turned their backs on me.
What is more, I shall never forget that Health Inspector and the day he stood in my Pub and said that we could live like pigs if we chose, but once we catered for the general public, they were entitled to be protected by law. Suggesting what? The cheeky bastard.
