An alternative Christmas

This weekend, we have celebrated the 16th birthday of our boy, who - thanks to pub life - received a listening age of 38 on his Spotify wrapped this year. 

This is the week that pub workers anticipate both with horror and delight. What drains you more than the late nights and early mornings is that the behaviour of people, some of whom you know and some you never want to know, is often from both ends of a very bipolar scale. 

By this date in the calendar- those of us in hospitality - are knackered. We are well into our energy reserves, we’re not sure if our fake smiles will last through to Christmas Day, and we’re fucking sick of Mariah Carey.

So, the birth of our son less than a week before Christmas could have been better planned, but, we are where we are, and - aside from one particularly stressful Christmas period when I ended up beginning the brand new year with a heavy dose of shingles - we’ve somehow managed. 

This week, there is joyousness in festivity in people, pure merriment that work is wrapped up and they have a long holiday in front of them, theirs to spend in whatever way they wish. Seeing friends or family, taking time to rest and recover from the daily stresses of work related bullshit. 

But, for whatever reasons they hold close to their chests, some don’t relish the time off. Alcohol can do strange things to people. It’s an accelerant for what already lurks beneath, amplifying emotions and moods. And that devious magnifying glass in liquid form can be a sneaky little fucktard. It knows things that you don’t. Yet. 

But a lot of the time alcohol just turns people into absolute catastrophes in really shit collections of Temu Christmas jumpers. 

This time of year can be difficult for people. It highlights those who will be missing from the celebrations. The empty chairs around the dinner table. And I’d like to touch on that for a moment. 

Without getting too deep or depressing, I lost my Nan earlier this year, just 6 days shy of her 97th birthday. I count my blessings that we had her for as long as we did. She was an absolute force to be reckoned with. The life and soul of every party. An old Eastender with stories that would make Ozzy Osbourne or Keith Moon look like absolute amateurs. She could hold an audience better than the Pope, and she is - and always will be - greatly missed. At least the bottles of Champagne and Brandy will be given sweet relief this Christmas Day. 

But there is someone else who will always be missing around our Christmas table. And I know, wherever my Nan is now, he will be with her, pouring the champagne and brandy down her neck and actively encouraging the dancing on tables. 

His name was Lee. And he fucking hated Christmas. 

When we took over the pub, he came with it. Along with the run down money pit that we’d decided was going to make us a fortune (it didn’t and still isn’t) we inherited Lee, and out of all the people this pub has thrown aggressively into my life, he will always be my favourite. 

We lost him in 2021 at the nowhere near ripe age of 53, and covid restrictions prevented us from celebrating him in the way he deserved. 

That pub changed when we lost him, there will forever be a huge Lee shaped hole that we will never ever fill. 

He was my brother, not by blood, but by every other meaning, and I - along with every other person that met him - loved the very bones of him. 

Christmas Day in the pub consists of a very early start, bottling up and cleaning up from the Christmas Eve madness, pulling our very best Zombie impersonations on, at best, 4 hours sleep. We then have breakfast together before donning our glad rags (smart dress - no Christmas jumpers please) ready to welcome the punters and wish them all a very merry Christmas. 

Once the 3 hours of complete chaos is over and we’ve pushed out the stragglers, we pull out all the tables into banquet style and enjoy our dinner. Our guests include close family, any staff that are mad enough to want to spend the day at their workplace and a few regulars who would otherwise be alone. This year, so far, we have 19 people. That will probably increase once we try to close the doors. 

Lee was always there. 

With very little family of his own and a very sad and difficult start in life, he fast became an honorary member of my family in all but name. 

Now, I say he hated Christmas and he did. But he loved spending that day with us. 

Lee was one of a kind, with many quirks that make him unforgettable. When my boy was just 7 years old, he taught him how to pull the perfect pint of Guinness. There are lots of words he taught him too, but it’s probably best I don’t get into that too much. 

Christmas week would see Lee become increasingly moody and short tempered. His daily rants about the night before would make his face all red with agitation, and make mine red from laughing. 

Christmas decoration day will always be dedicated to Lee too. We each hated this with equal passion. I would have rather gouged my eyeballs out with a wet and shitty bog brush. 

“You know there are companies out there who you pay and they come and do this shit for you?” He’d say. 

“What, and ruin all this fun?” I say. 

Then I’d remind him how much those companies cost. 

“Tight c**t” He’d say, before downing the fairy lights that he wanted to strangle me with. 

“That’s Mrs. Tight c**t to you!” I’d shout after him, as he made his way outside for a roll up. 

Since he’s been gone, this day has become bearable for me. I now spend that morning cracking up at the stupid shit we used to do. I use it, strangely, as a way of remembrance, safe in the knowledge that there’s nothing he’d despise more than to have that day dedicated to his memory. This is also why I have his photo up behind the bar, so that he’s forever there. And probably why he now haunts me. 

The things we hated most about Christmas decorations are as follows:

Glitter. What the actual fuck? Which deranged arsewipe of a human decided “yeah, let’s invent something that behaves like Herpes but is super shiny and can blind people”

Tinsel. It smells like the inside of a charity shop bin bag and looks like a piñata had a breakdown. 

Mistletoe. Absolutely not. I am not facilitating drunken gob smashing sessions between punters who can barely stand upright, thanks. I see enough slobbering on a Friday night, it doesn’t need encouragement. 

Staple gun. 

Blu tack. 

Fairy light wires. 

Christmas trees……..urghhh!

All up there with those pricks that don’t indicate, and the park-at-the-pump-while-I-do-my-weekly-shop-in-M&S-petrol-garage twats. 

That day costs me my sanity, my will to live, almost my marriage and £4K in batteries. (We have AA batteries, AAA batteries, one weird square battery from the 90s and something that might be a mint.)

The whole event is quite dramatic, and for what? So people can walk in, go “ooh looks lovely!” And then spill a pint on it all anyway. 

God save the king and pass me a large Gin. 

Lee and I would joke about the mulled wine masses. 

1st December. “Ooh have you got any mulled wine?”

Yes - we have mulled wine and mulled cider. What else would you like mulled? Give me your coat and I’ll mull it. Your dog? Your vape? All mulled. 

Found a random small child in the beer garden? Mull the fuck out of it. 

(Calm down, Janet. It’s metaphorical. Of course I’m not going to mull your dog)

What is it with the excessive mulling? 

We would actually celebrate the first ‘mulled something’ request of the year, but try our hardest not to catch one another’s eye so we could maintain our constant professional standards behind the bar (?)

One year a few of our locals were enjoying themselves a bit too much. We knew a couple of them were working up until Christmas Eve (oh the horror…..can you imagine?!) this particular night was - by their standards - still a ‘school night’ 

They stood at the bar, with grins as big as the Cheshire Cat on laughing gas and loudly announced that they wanted jäger bombs. Good idea….right? 

Lee had lost all patience. He was wound up as tight as the fairy lights were on the morning of the fateful decoration day. He marched up to that end of the bar and announced just as loudly as they had, and I quote:

“Fuck off. You’ve got work in the morning, you absolute pricks.” Then with an open hand, he slapped the bar and added “you’ll thank me in the morning. Go home!”

Which they did. 

The next morning I received a message from one of them simply asking me to thank Lee for not serving them and sending them on their way. 

This was the beauty of Lee, you see. He could say whatever he liked to people and they just obeyed. And then thanked him for his service! 

On particularly busy shifts, if anyone asked for a coffee or another hot beverage he would simply lie that the “kettles broke”, never mind that we had a coffee machine that did the job with just a touch of a button. Under his breath he would mutter something along the lines of “go home and drink coffee you dickheads, pub’s are for drinking alcohol.”

He had a gift. He could talk to anyone about anything. He knew so much about so many different things, but his mastermind specialist subject would have been music. Any music from the beginning of time up to about 2010.

He knew who recorded what song, if it was a cover and in which case, who recorded the original, what number it reached in the charts, what album it was from and which year it was released. He knew band members by name, what year they left said band and which band they joined after. He knew one hit wonders and what the music video was like. And being an avid music fan myself, this only solidified our friendship. We spoke for hours and hours about music. We had little jukebox nights, where we would decide on a theme and spend a few days putting together playlists for that night and wait for the other to make the connection. It was almost like a competition, a music quiz just for us. Slowly the customers twigged what we were doing and joined in. 

If there were any ‘youngsters’ who thought they could take over the jukebox when he was working, and fill it up with terrible taste tunes, he would use the red button we had behind the bar to skip the songs and just give them their pound back out of his pocket. He’d say “That jukebox is mine, and I ain’t listening to this shit”. Again, they’d just let him. Never cause a scene and end up listening to his music and actually enjoying it! 

There are a hundred thousand songs, artists, bands that remind me of Lee, and some of them creep up on me when I least expect it. 

I had a plaque made up after he died that is displayed above our jukebox. It simply reads 

“Lee’s jukebox” 

Every so often, on random play, the jukebox spits out “I’m a wanker” by George Formby. And I smile. That’s Lee right there, laughing, watching me run for the red button.