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Christmas at The Gunmakers
CAMRA are having a meeting in our back room tonight. The staff are under strict instructions to pour their beer flat, with absolutely no head, and I've asked my regulars to pretend to be working class. If we don't tick those boxes, I'll probably be told my pub isn't up to scratch.
I think the meeting is of the Great British Beer Festival organising committee. To be fair, the Earl's Court event is about the only CAMRA gig I have any time for. I attended in both 2007 and 2008 and plan to do so again this year.
 Of late, I've struggled to keep the blog going. Weirdly, readership has grown considerably in the first half of 2009, so I can only assume that most people actually prefer the pithy one line posts. Nevetheless, I recognise that I need to put some meat on the bones. Here's just a few of the beery things I've done that I should have written about, but didn't get around to:
- A seminar on lager at Thornbridge in Derbyshire. It was attended by, among others, Alastair Hook from Meantime and one of the chaps from Birrificio Italiano. Here's what Martyn Cornell had to say about that one. (All I remember is the bloody long journey there and back and Roger Protz refusing to drink canned Guinness on the train home).
- A return to the first pub I ever worked in - The Steamboat - after 12 years.
- The Tuesday evening when a Society of Independent Brewers' AGM happened to co-incide with a British Guild of Beer Writer's committee meeting here at The Gunmakers. That was a funny one - the regulars didn't know what to make of it. Pictured are Jeff Pickthall, Pete Brown and Chris Marchbanks of the Guild tucking into some samples of unreleased Brew Dog beers I brought up from the cellar that night.
- A tour around the tiny but much-respected York Brewery (I now sell their beer fairly regularly, as it goes: Constantine's selling well at the mo).
- A beer writers junket to Sharp's in Cornwall, which was followed by a somewhat pished evening in charge of dangerous knives at Rick Stein's cookery school. Here's Zak Avery's write-up. (You can see the dodgy long hair and sidies I was sporting back then in one of his photos).
All of those happened months and months ago. It would be strange to write about them so long after the event. Boo-hoo. But, from now on, I'm going to start writing properly again. I did used to enjoy it, after all. So bear with me while my online mojo returns. You'll love it, I assure you*. * I can't promise to write anything that'll turn beer geeks on, through. Let's face it, that ship sailed a long time ago. I don't really drink strong bottled beers and I don't go to beer festivals and grotty tickers' pubs anymore, so I'm no good to ya.
I just arrived back from Italy after a very delayed EasyJet flight from Napoli. The problem with budget airlines is that when something goes wrong, the person who tells you is invariably unattractive and painfully common. Sort it out, Stelios.
I'll write some bits and pieces about the week when I get a chance. We hooned it up on our first night in Rome, at my good friend Manuele's pub and restaurant. The rest of our time was spent in Minori, a seaside village that's only a ten minute, white-knuckle cliffside drive from Amalfi. We'd hired a villa that sat above the outsized basilica. The whole place looked like a toy town from our terrace. Every evening, we drank Paulaner from litre steins and played elementary card games at a little pub by the beach. We didn't do much else, really.
Tomorrow morning, I'm off to Italy for a week. Our first night will be spent at my favourite beer bar in the world. John O' will be taking the helm here at the pub (if he makes it back from Paris, where he's inexplicably ridden to on his scooter this week). See ya, wouldn't wanna be ya.
I got a parcel in the post this morning. When I opened it, dozens of beer mats plastered in BNP propaganda spilled out. Eek.
I would never buy a pewter tankard myself, but I do own several of them. First off, there are those little ones I found in The Gunmakers' cellar. The guy I bought the pub off liked a flutter, and on race days he and his bro would serve Guinness and champagne in them. Then there's the pint jug, engraved with my initials and a message of goodwill, gifted to me by former colleagues in early 2007 when I left a job where I had a lot of good friends.
This evening my secretary from back then - who organised my leaving gifts - came in with some of the others to see the pub. I polished up her present and drank from it for the first time. It's something I'll always love (even if it does remind me of Real Ale Twats).
I can't deny the obvious. Is it because I've lost interest? Well, not quite. There's loads I'd like to write about. I just don't have the time. It's not like every minute of every day's bound up in running this pub, because it isn't. No, it's just that I value my spare time, and when I have less of it the internet's the last place I want to be. I hate computers. (Well, that's not true, I loved my Commodore 64 and my Amiga 500).
What's apparent to me is that I've built up something pretty good here. I don't want to throw that away. On the whole this blog has a good following, and it's launched me into a new, more fulfilling career. My life has changed immeasurably since the beginning of 2007, when I started writing here to stave off the office blues. You, as readers, have all helped to motivate me as I've sought a new and more fulfilling life. Thanks for that. Being a leveraged finance lawyer never was my bag, you see. Being a publican suits me much better. As old friends remind me, I've always wanted a pub. And now I've got one. And it's great.
This evening, I sat at my bar after a swift, breakneck run around Holborn, Covent Garden, Soho, Fitzrovia and Bloomsbury. Endorphins dance a merry jig, Tim Taylor Landlord meets my lips, and a gorgeous steak dinner sits in front of me. John O's entertaining the customers as one of our new recruits - a firecracker personality - backs him up. A couple of O.E. barristers who went to my college rock up for a nosey (a familiar situation). And I look around, and I'm proud of the place.
In the back room, the Magpies - the London branch of the Newcastle United Supporters Club - are having their monthly committee meeting. The Gunmakers was their home in the 70s and 80s, before idiots tried to turn it into a restaurant. Happily, they've got wind that the place is a pub again, and they've become regulars once more. All I need to do is put in a darts board, and they'll be in heaven, they say. Not likely, I reply.
The photo was taken on Sunday (on my mobby, naturally) from Holborn viaduct, which passes over Farringon Street and the subterranean course of the River Fleet.
There was a great article in yesterday's FT about pubs. Here's a link. Those who moan about the price of pint should note the comment about pubs being a service industry and staff costs being key. Likewise, it might help those who blame all the industry's woes on a couple of pubcos to apply a bit more perspective to the issue.
Here's a picture of the Westminster Morris Men dancing outside The Gunmakers. Their website is here.
The Westminster Morrismen are going to dance for us outside the pub tonight at 7.45pm. Eddie the barman's just confided in me that the imminent arrival of our hanky-waving chums is garnering a mixed response. I'm genuinely puzzled by the naysayers. It's not like they have to buy into the whole thing, don a silly hat and jig around themselves. It's just something that's going down at a pub they normally drink at anyway. Why the Morris-hate?
I'm sorry I haven't posted much recently. The truth is that I've just been working too hard. What's that I hear? The sound of the smallest violin in the world? Business is booming (good thing) and I'm a bit short-staffed (bad thing) so I've spent most of the last two weeks behind the bar. Gone are the afternoon naps and the cheeky pints in other people's pubs. I've finally cracked and posted an ad on Gumtree.
Next Wednesday, the Westminster Morris Men will be dancing outside of the pub. This morning, I put up posters to let people know it's happening. My French chef clocked one as he went out for a tab break. "What eez zis, 'Morris Mens'?" Perhaps the description I gave wasn't very good. After I finished stumbling over my words, he looked at me wearing an expression of horror and confusion.
 It's election day for the European Parliament. As a child of the early 80s whose earliest memories are of policemen scrapping with striking miners at the end of our street (you see, I am Northern really), I find it surreal that Arthur Scargill is on the ballot paper for London. What a blast from a miserable past.
 On Saturday we're hosting a fundraiser at the pub for Lively Minds, a charity set up by a friend of mine from uni. (We were, believe it or not, in a production of My Fair Lady together). It's a singles night. All the girls' tickets have been sold, but she needs more boys. So if you're one of those, you can sign up here. It's a tenner. There'll be single women. And ale. Best of both worlds, then.
The sun's out, so blogging would be foolish. So this is all I have for you right now. In other news, current guest beers at the pub are Harviestoun Bitter & Twisted and Triple fff Alton's Pride. Black Sheep Golden Sheep and Hopback Summer Lightning are coming up next. My cellar's so bloody brilliant that the temperature has remained at a lovely 12 degrees celsius down there despite the heatwave, so the beer's as cool and refreshing as ever. I wish I could say the same for other pubs in London, many of which become no-go areas for real ale as soon as the sun comes out.
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