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Take a look at David Cameron recently, for example. Twice in the past month he’s had to deal with very important matters, and all commentators have been able to mention is that he’s had to interrupt his family holiday in order to do so. Disparaging remarks were made about Boris Johnson, too, who happened to be in a camper van somewhere round the Canadian Rockies when Tottenham fell.
Running a pub might not make you as important as being Prime Minister or Mayor of London, granted, but when you disappear from the bar, customers tend to notice. “You’re always on holiday,” will come the remark, as if it’s iniquitous to have had more than two days off since Christmas.
And, recently, I’ve fallen victim to the “you’re always ill” observers, who’ve noticed I’ve been a bit poorly of late. I can’t argue with that, either. I don’t consider myself to be a sickly person; rarely have I had much time off with illness throughout my career, but over the past couple of years even I’ve noticed a trend towards more time spent not enjoying myself in bed.
At first, it was easy to put the general malaise down to the hours burned running a pub. We’ll all be familiar with that particular problem. This week, I interviewed a landlady who’s pub opens at 6.45am and is still going late in to the evening - and she’s there for much of it, whilst juggling a family including two children slightly younger than my own. Burn out isn’t uncommon in this industry.
But eventually my doctor decided I ought to get some blood tests done, and so we started the rather worrying period of testing for this, that and the other, with some rather frightening verbs and abbreviations chucked in for good measure until, eventually, the doc called me for a chat.
This was it. He was going to tell me what was wrong. I steeled myself for the bad news, mentally checked that I could remember who my life assurance is with, and wondered how I might break the bad news to Ali and the kids.
“I think,” my doctor said with a practiced tone of gravity, “that you might be allergic to beer.”
And, slowly, it began to make sense. When I drink beer, I’m poorly. My friends will, of course, be able to point out that I’ve never been able to handle much beer, but we’re not talking here about necking 14 pints of Stella and then vomiting in the neighbour’s front garden. Rather, it’s a case of enjoying a solitary pint of ale and then spending the next two days feeling rather generally unwell and trying to recover.
That’s a bit of a sod when you’re livelihood comes from writing, talking and selling “beer”.
Of course, there are more tests to be done before conclusive proof is obtained, but over the past two weeks I have avoided beer and feel as fit as a fiddle. Instead, I have been experimenting with wine and Bacardi and the occasional fruit-based cocktail and, so far, it seems to be working.
I am, however, going to have to change my sales patter. When a customer asks me which bitter I recommend I suspect answering: “dunno, they all make me sick,” isn’t going to do much for my profits...
Mark Daniels is the licensee at the Tharp Arms in Chippenham, Cambridgeshire
