Working on one's own

I said in a previous post that I was going to write about how I’d amuse myself if forced to self-isolate, but shutting oneself away behind closed doors and not venturing out of the house is the extreme step, and not one that applies at the moment. It has happened with our Latin neighbours – France, Italy and Spain, and unfortunately it could be the next stage here, if the government’s current measures are not successful in halting the spread of Covid-19.

But let’s not dwell on that for the moment, as I’m sure we’ll cross that bridge if it does come to that. Instead I wanted to describe a period when, through work, my physical contact with much outside the immediate vicinity of West Kent, was pretty limited.

For a period of nearly six years, Mrs PBT’s and I ran our own small, independent off-licence in Tonbridge, called the Cask & Glass. It was an interesting period of our lives, but it did mean we didn’t see much of each other, and that family life was of necessity quite curtailed. Our shop was open seven days a weeks, all day at weekends (10am – 10.30pm Sat & 12-10pm Sun), plus split sessions weekdays (12-3pm & 5-10.30pm).

The two hour, mid-afternoon, weekday break allowed me just enough time to collect son Matthew from school, and then to pick Eileen up from work. It didn’t allow time for family meals, so for most of my time at the off-licence I relied on "ready meals" heated up in a micro-wave. There was a combined kitchen-cum-office at the rear of the shop, and I tried to aim  my evening meal for times when I knew that trade would be quiet.

There was a loud bell which rang every time the door opened, so I could nip out, serve the customer(s) and make sure no-one was robbing the place blind, but I lost count of the number of disturbed meals I had during that six year period. The situation was sometimes made worse with people wanting to stop and chat, and whilst on the whole I welcomed this, there were times when all I wanted was to get back to my dinner which was rapidly becoming cold. The words, “Haven’t you got any homes to go to?” certainly sprang to mind on those occasions.

It wasn’t all bad though, and whilst some might turn their noses up at ready-meals, they are portion-controlled, and in the main contain a correct balance of nutrients. With my calorific intake limited, and the physical work of shifting cases of beer, as well as positioning casks up onto the stillage (we sold cask beer to take-away by the pint – how history is repeating itself!), meant I not only managed to shed those excess pounds, but I was fit and active.

There was a social aspect to the business as well, because many customers became regulars, and one or two even became friends. As mentioned above, people would often stop and chat, and at times the shop resembled a pub; the difference being it was a pub where customers took their purchases home to drink.

But as referred to earlier, running such a full-time business single-handed, took its toll on both home and social life. I did have people say that as the shop didn’t open until midday most of the week, I had my mornings free, but people forget there are tasks such as banking plus trips to the Cash & Carry to factor in, and on top of this, there was the cellar work. I prided myself on the latter and for two years running, back in the early 2000’s, the Cask & Glass achieved a place in the CAMRA Good Beer Guide.

As might have been guessed from the above, the seven day opening not only put a strain on family life, but also meant that holidays were out of the question. If I wanted time off I had to arrange cover for the shop, and the individual standing in quite naturally wanting to be paid.

This threw up problems of its own, as officially wages should go through the till, with appropriate deductions made for tax and National Insurance.  This was impractical, given the casual nature of the employee, most of whom preferred “cash in hand.” This meant accruing a little extra cash from time to time, to cover such eventualities. I won’t go into too much detail here, for obvious  reasons.

So apart from the odd Saturday for a CAMRA function, when Mrs PBT’s would cover the shop for me, my time off from running the Cask & Glass consisted of two weekends away to Norfolk – visiting my elderly parents, a four night stay in Munich, plus a three night stop over in Salzburg – the latter occurring about six weeks before completing the sale of the business.

As for the sale, that occurred after a customer-friend, offered me a position back in the healthcare industry. I could write a whole chapter about how stressful the sale of the business was, but will spare you the details. All I will say is it involved the transfer of the lease on the premises, as well as valuation, marketing and sale of the business itself. With three sets of solicitors involved, you can imagine just how fraught the process was.

I wrote in detail about the process here, describing that as soon as the sale of the business was complete, I booked a weeks holiday in the Maldives. After being cooped up in a small shop for the best part of six years, some sun, sea and were just what I needed.

Looking back, that holiday seems a lifetime away, but it became the first of many foreign adventures, made possible by a salaried, management position, rather than the precarious existence of running one’s own business. We had two holidays booked for this coming May, but these will invariably be cancelled.

The cancellation will be small beer if it the shut-down and isolation the whole world is undergoing, leads to the defeat of the Corona virus, and even better if the inevitable death toll from this disease is kept as low as possible, so when people ask me if I fear self-isolation, I can say, hand on heart, “No I don’t.”

Footnote: I changed the title of this post, to one that reflected the situation I was in during the time I was running our off-licence, as whilst it was isolation in a sense, it was nothing like what is occurring now. It was certainly not "social isolation" by any stretch of the imagination.

I don't have any digital photos taken from that time, so the ones featured in the post were taken recently. (You don't think I would have applied those gaudy, stick-on letters defacing the window, do you?)