Village pub landlord calls time for good

From the North Devon Journal:

By Adam Wilshaw

A VILLAGE pub landlord says he is declaring himself bankrupt and quitting the trade after a sudden downturn in profits, adding to fears that North Devon’s public houses are facing decimation.

Patrick Oakey has closed the Fox and Hounds pub in Fremington, where he has been the landlord since 2004, and is moving out of the pub, which is also his home, with his wife and two teenage sons.

Mr Oakey said large numbers of people, particularly younger customers, were being lured away from pubs, such as the Fox and Hounds, by cheap supermarket alcohol. He also said the smoking ban had hit his takings and because of the credit crunch he was unable to secure credit to see him through a bad patch.

Campaigners and senior politicians, including North Devon MP Nick Harvey and Torridge and West Devon MP Geoffrey Cox, not to mention Prince Charles, have warned that thousands of traditional English pubs are in jeopardy, partly because of the economic recession, but also because of the way large pub companies, who own the majority of pubs, often oblige their tenants to buy beer through them at prices higher than cost (known as a tie).

Mr Oakey said: “My client base has always been youngsters and when they walk in the supermarkets and see cheap alcohol they are not going to come in and pay £3 a pint.

“It’s part of village life and it is sad it has closed. Enterprise (the firm which owns the Fox and Hounds) will get someone else in.”

He added: “I will miss it. I have spent four years building the place up. I wouldn’t have another pub.” He also thanked all his loyal customers.

The Fox and Hounds lease is on the market for £97,500. According to Cowling, which is the agent dealing with the sale of the lease, the pub has a turnover of £175,000 with a rent of £23,000 a year.

The Campaign for Real Ale (Camra) has warned that almost 60 UK pubs are closing every month. In the Barnstaple area alone pubs currently on the market include the Wrey Arms in Sticklepath, the Tavern in the town centre, and Funky Munky on the Strand.

The pattern is the same across North Devon and Torridge. A recent Journal investigation found that many pubs in North Devon were struggling to make profits, although local Camra members said good quality pubs which served well-kept beer and good food in attractive environments were still doing well.

Landlords blamed cheap supermarket alcohol and the recession for the decline in takings in recent months. But some pubs are bucking the trend and reporting healthy custom.

I find myself wrestling with the age old battle of love and hate, and contradictory passions in one pub

An ill wind was wailing through the world economy, through all our bones and the future bones of all our future generations for ever, as we made our way through half-deserted streets to one of the most popular pubs in North Devon and Torridge.

I was feeling a bit depressed about the future for our pubs because I had recently met a North Devon pub landlord who was about to declare himself bankrupt and close his business. He said he was being squeezed from all sides; by the pub company, the smoking ban, and by cheap supermarket booze of all types and horrors. But despite all that he could have made a go of it, maybe, if only he had had more of one vital business ingredient: customers.

Sometimes it is good to acknowledge the blindingly bloody obvious. Pubs are closing because customers are not using them, and other pubs are still busy and profitable, because customers are still using them. So how about a case study? One of the most popular pubs in North Devon is the Wetherspoon's outlet The Panniers, in Barnstaple. It will never close. It will survive the recession. It would survive a nuclear war. And on a dank Thursday evening this month, the place was so ramjam pack-a-doodled that when I arrived with my friend we took the only two remaining chairs.

I was still chewing over all the stinking doom in the news. Pub doom. My own eyes weren't helping. Walking to the Panniers through the glistering Barnstaple town centre streets, all but deserted, we passed empty pub after empty pub.

But not the Panniers. There can only be two reasons why the Panniers is such a success; good beer and cheap prices. Because the place has atmosphere the way big brand keg lagers have taste, the way Gordon Brown has a radiant smile, the way David Cameron has sincerity, the way house prices are clever, the way plastic window frames are acceptable in a public house context (no PVC frames at the Panniers by the way, fellow window freaks).

In fact, if you have ever been in a Wetherspoon's pub anywhere in the queendom you will know what the Panniers is like. They are all the same.

Same hotel lobby decor, same food, same prices. The only thing to tell you you are not in Nottingham or Norwich is the local accents of the many punters.

The beer was superb, as good as a good rub down in an ice house by a crackling wood blaze while the huskies keep guard against the glacier pirates. I had a crisply glorious pint of Smoky Joe. My friend had a soothing draft of something dark and powerful. He was satisfied with it and it made him philosophical. As we sat and talked - mostly about babies - I noticed we were surrounded by adults of all ages, most of whom were eating curry from metal pots. If I had been tiresome enough to ask them how often they came here, they might have said: "every week".

If you are interested in good, low priced ale, the Panniers is a perfect hostelry. Cheap grub too. Probably tastes quite nice. And, you know, I hate the place.

I hate it because it is the bland pub universe cousin of a corporate fast food chain outlet. The place has a sort of psychic anti-character impact on the space it contains, with its school dining hall ambiance. There is no sense of community. Good pubs make you feel like you could own them, in some vicarious customer way, if you were a regular.

In terms of character alone, look at a pub I have wrote about before on this blog: The Reform Inn, in Pilton. It doesn't sell cheap curry and it does not welcome children or have a wide variety of the finest beers known to man and beast. But in all its eccentric, even ugly, brilliance, the local boozer offers a rare sanctuary from the blanding-out influence of the boardroom folk. What choice we have left is debatable. But there are still good local pubs who deserve our custom, even if it's just £3 a week.

We drinkers vote with our pint pots and our wine glasses, and the Panniers was as full as can be on Thursday last week. The beancounters will tell you this success was proof of armour against the ill wind blowing through the economy.

I kept thinking of my ideal pub.

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Beer Vs Beer

A strangely serious post this week...

George Orwell wrote an essay in 1946 about the cost of buying books, which he compared to the cost of buying cigarettes. He wanted to look at the assumption that buying books was "too expensive" for most people, so he made a rough calculation of how much he had spent on reading material. The sum seemed like a lot, but it was much less than what he was spending on tobacco. Orwell was a relatively frugal man but he did smoke a lot, in common with most of his contemporaries.

In the essay he went on to question the relationship between the financial cost of his books and their actual value to him. His essay concluded: "And if our book consumption remains as low as it has been, at least let us admit that it is because reading is a less exciting pastime than going to the dogs, the pictures or the pub, and not because books, whether bought or borrowed, are too expensive."

I think this sort of thinking could apply to how we view our pubs, which must be treasured as community enginerooms as well as unique pieces of an historical jigsaw.

In these times of rising unemployment, plunging pension pots and depressed wages, it might seem crazy to encourage people to buy beer and food in our pubs. But surely a small amount of our spending is about choice and is about the total enjoyment of our lives. What is exciting about beer and pubs should be more important than the mere ingestion of ethanol alcohol.

Whenever I am in a supermarket I see queues of people with trolleys stacked with junk food and cheap alcohol among the necessities. That's their choice and I'm no health freak. My argument is that the value of cheap alcohol in supermarkets is much less than the value of a pint in a good local pub in North Devon and Torridge. Try this rhetorical calculation and think about the choice:

You earn the minimum wage or not much more and after paying the bills and everything else unavoidable as well as charitable giving, you are left with £3 one Friday night to spend on the treat that might greatly increase your happiness in the drizzly depth of December. That £3 could buy enough alcohol from a supermarket to make you drunk. You could get some powerful booze, go home, watch the TV and sink in to a private oblivion. Or you could have a friendly pint of beer in your local pub, where you will meet people, and hopefully find humour or gossip. When I was a hospital porter earning £10,000 a year and paying my own way, I always had a couple of quid to go to my local for a pint.

And just as a book might add more joy and music to your life than a packet of cigarettes, and with value impossible to calculate in terms of money, so too a trip to the pub will improve your life more than a turn down the aisles in the superstore. How can it not?