About this time we got two of my great grand dads move into the pub with us. Grand Dad Joe Fisher was my mum’s granddad and he moved from his house in Stockton Heath. He was a jolly old man and was still quite fit, he liked to grow dahlias and brought tubers with him. These were planted in the side paddock and he and my brother Colin tended them. The blooms were prize winners and were huge, Colin made quite a bit of pocket money selling the flowers on the car park to the pub customers.
Granddad Bert Worral was my Dad’s grand dad and he moved in from his daughters in Chorley. Bert was a very tall man and had been a police sergeant in his younger days, he was not as fit as granddad Fisher or so he said. Granddad fisher was always first up in the morning, he would come down stairs with a mug of tea and get the fires lit all through the pub long before anyone else was up and before the cleaning ladies came in too. He liked to do a bit to help because he was grateful to have his independence. Both granddads stayed with us rent free and had their pensions to live on too. They would eat with the family and I really enjoyed their company. I wish now that I had spent more time with them both and found out more about their lives. They shared a room and a double bed, granddad Worral slept against the wall because was always the first to go up and the last to rise each day.
Grandad Worral had lots of stories about when he was a police man. The one that sticks in my mind was a pub on his beat that had an alley running down the side. Every morning there was a stream of urine from this alley in to the street. He complained to the pub land lord that is was a stench that needed to be sorted, the land lord asked for his help and he said "I will sort it for you." He went back the next morning and the land lord said he had heard some awful screams after the pub closed but when he came out no-one was about. He took the landlord outside in the daylight and showed him what he had done. He had got a roll of wire chicken mesh and fastened it to the wall in the alley. he then attached a twelve volt battery to the wire mesh. They never had any more problems
Granddad Fisher liked a drink or two and made friends with a local farmer Harold White. He would come in some times and ask Granddad Fisher, “Are we burning the cork tonight Joe”, I knew this meant that he would buy a bottle of whisky and take the cork out and throw it on the fire so that it all had to be drunk before they went home. You must remember this was all in the days before the breathaliser came in. Joe was asked one night if he needed a hand to get up to bed , he said, “ No thanks, I can make it to the bed room door, then I just wait for the bed to come round before I jump.” Joe was never drunk he just played along, most of the whisky he was given went from his glass into a pint pot he placed on the ground beside his chair and it was put back behind the bar for my Dad. It sometimes was drunk after the customers and staff had gone but mostly it went back in the bottle to sell again.
There were some wonderful characters that came in the pub, Bobby Dunne used to drive a wagon around the farms picking up vegetables which he would then deliver to Liverpool Market early in the morning, he parked his wagon on the car park when he had done all his collections and come into the lounge where the telephone was. He sat at the table at the bottom of the stairs or stood at the end of the bar as near to the phone as he could so that he could answer it. He was waiting for the farmers to ring to tell him what they had to go to market, the pub was Bobby Dunne’s office. He drank bottles of Forest brown ale and would drink about six every day and then drive the lorry around the farms from about two o’clock onwards. This was regular six days a week but he was never stopped for drunk driving. Then in 1967 the breathaliser was brought in and he never drank another beer ever again, he changed to bottled chandy from that day on. It was a non alcoholic beer look alike that the brewery brought out for drivers.
Also sitting that table regularly was an old man named George Pye , his nick name was the vicar. He biked it everywhere and must have been in his seventies when I knew him. The local undertaker Mr Charnock was a regular, one of his regular jokes was to get his tape measure out and hold it up to some ones back saying “ I better get these sizes down, you look like I might need them soon.” He did this one morning and he was phoned that afternoon to say could he come down to see the man’s wife as he had dropped dead at the dinner table. He never got his tape out again.
In the vaults every evening were Mr Kershaw and Jonny, Mr Kershaw’s sons owned the cockle factory down the road and Jonny drove for him, they would come in every evening come rain or shine for two or three drinks and a few games of dominoes. I used to have hours of fun playing dominoes with them. Mr Kershaw always walked with two sticks, he had had rickets as a child. Dad said his legs were that bowed he could never stop a pig in a jigger. I never knew what he meant until I was lot older.
A few of our friends from the Mersey forge came out to visit us in the Morris Dancers. Alan Molloy was a dock yard electrician who brought his mate Arthur with him. I remember Arthur was a good artist and did signs with cocktail names for the cocktail bar. Alan went on to marry my mum’s hair dresser Pauline Kershaw. They eventually got a pub of their own and we went to visit them years later in Preston in a pub called The Prince Arthur.
Mum decided that she should do some lunchtime catering in the pub to try and encourage custom. First she stared with a little camping stove down in the bar, on it would be two very large pans. One would have a soup of the day and the other would have hotpot. This was sold with bread rolls and was soon doing so well it was decided to expand it a bit and a pie warmer was bought. After a few weeks the equipment was brought out from behind the bar and a stall was set up in the lounge bar. On this was the camping stove with two rings, a glass display cabinet for filled rolls and sandwiches and the pie warmer. We started to get really busy with the staff from Hedges and from John Churches who was a local vegetable wholesaler. As well as that there were people who were on their way to Southport for the day who called in for lunch.
Dad found a supplier that could get a new type of cooker that could warm a pie in fifteen seconds or cook a joint of beef in fifteen minutes and he ordered one. It was a marvellous machine with an automatic timer, you just put the food in this metal box, closed the door by sliding it down, set the timer and pressed a button. The door flew open when the time finished and the food came out steaming. If you set the time to long the food came out absolutely cremated. I remember trying to do an egg in a dish with a knob of butter. It was supposed to come out like a poached egg. I tried and for got to put a pin prick in the yolk. Fifteen seconds later there was such a bang and the door flew open. The inside of the oven was covered in exploded egg and there was nothing in the bowl. We did allsorts in the new Dyson microwave, we were told not to stand too close to it as it could have some strange effects on a young man’s anatomy. It might make him sterile with long exposure. People would come to see this new machine and order a pie just to see how quick it was. We could get the pie hot before the round of drinks was pulled and paid for. It paid for itself in no time because the pies did not have to be heated in the oven before they went on sale. I would work on the snack bar during the holidays and at the weekend before I started to work behind the bar.
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