Dec. 16, 2006 - 1:18 a.m.
So. You have just moved house. Everybody knows how stressful that is, right? All that packing your life into boxes and hoping it all turns up in one piece, fighting with builders and workmen because things just aren't going to plan, not being able to find something really important because it has been packed away somewhere and everybody swears blind they haven't seen or touched it... The list of grievances is endless. But luckily it all eventually falls into place, and then you get to do the fun part! Making it a home! The part I like best is getting my scruffs on and painting, shopping for little bits and pieces, imprinting myself and my personality into it. Great fun, agreed?
Well then imagine this. You have coped with the initial stress of moving, you have worked blood, sweat and tears turning into a place you love to be in and you are looking forward to lots of new friends coming round and admiring your handy work and telling you how amazing your new abode looks. Ooh, there goes the door now! Who might it be?
Oh dear. It's a group of rough-looking, smelly, rude people. And they don't look happy. "Don't worry mate," they say as they come on in and 'make themselves at home' "We come here all the time. By the way - it's shit! Why have you put that there? We used to be able to smoke when it was so and so's house. I don't like the colour you've painted that skirting board. That wont do at all, put it all back where it was to begin with. Who do you think you are marching in and changing everything?!" Then, as if that wasn't bad enough they start picking up your lovely new tea-light holders and putting them in their pockets. They use your nice new china as ashtrays. They rip bits of your pictures off the walls.
Of course, this would never really happen. Not in a house anyway. But moving into our lovely new pub was actually scarily quite like that story! Before the grand opening we spent 10 days on site with the new staff and spent a hideous amount of our own money making it homely and pretty. The old pub had quite a reputation for being shabby and rough, with some rather shady characters as regulars, and we were looking forward to providing the community with a nice new local. It's a beautiful, old, listed building and we wanted to claim it back for the locals!
Now, we were expecting some of the old guys to grumble because it wasn�t dirt-cheap anymore and you could only smoke in the smoking areas etc. That�s nothing we couldn�t handle. What we didn�t expect was that half of the areas most wanted lowlifes and petty criminals would skulk in and try to take over. Even that didn�t take us long to get our heads round. In hindsight, it was inevitable. They had been barred from everywhere else so they were bound to try their luck with us. The thing that we found hardest to believe was the way �respectable folk�, the very people we had worked so hard to impress, behaved in the first few weeks. Okay, so I didn�t really care if people didn�t like the d�cor, I did and that was what mattered, and we always knew the odd accessory would go walkabout at first. But the sheer volume of things that got stolen astonished me. And it wasn�t just how much they stole, it was what they stole. These were people who went for quantity over quality any day!
Then there was the vandalism. I spent ages making a collage around the mirror in the ladies to brighten things up a bit. Within a few days most of this was ripped down. The beaded garlands I hung up were snapped and pulled down. A light fitting was pulled off the wall. Cigarette holes were burnt into the furniture and so on. But it wasn�t the scum doing this. Most of them came in, had a look around then left gain after seeing how much we had changed. No, it was the local people who normally moaned about how the area was becoming run-down and unsafe and full of drugs and crime. There we were, trying to get the drug dealers and thieves out and give them a lovely new place to drink, and they were spoiling it! When confronted about such behaviour the reaction generally went down the lines of �I�ve been drinking in this pub for 30 years�.� As if that meant they could do as they pleased!
During those first few weeks I was often tempted to throw in the towel, but my friends convinced me it was just post opening craziness and that it would all settle down. They were right of course, and now things are going swimmingly. The clientele are lovely, we�ve had fantastic feedback, and we are now officially one of the most successful bars in the neighbourhood. Plus, most of the d�cor stays firmly in its place! But just in case you didn�t believe me, I shall close with a list of the most bizarre of the robberies�.
� One of our pre-opening pressies was some lovely posh hand soap and hand lotion for the ladies. We weren�t surprised when this went missing. We were, however, a little puzzled when the replacement soap � supermarket own brand at about 49p � also went. We were even more perplexed when, the following weekend, someone stole the basket the latest soap was sitting in � but not the actual soap!!
� One strange lady kept taking the used tea-lights out of the holders and taking them home. She never once took one of the pretty holders though!
� Last week the handle of the gent�s toilet door was nicked � how could that possibly be useful to anyone??
� Half a pack of cards from the poker set we bought has mysteriously vanished�
� Several table numbers have gone. We are definitely missing 7, 8 and some of the 20�s which can make food ordering very confusing!!
� As part of my collage I included a cutting from some horoscopes. Aquarius I think, as if it matters. Someone went to great pains to peel this off without it ripping!
Okay, not actually a robbery but needs a mention. Some supposed adults kept finding it hilarious to rub out words on our chalkboards so that �warm your cockles� became �warm your cock� and �no smoking area� became �smoking area�. Funny for about 5 minutes. Seriously though, we had to change them back a million times. It wore thin very quickly. Hilarious guys, my best mates 5-year-old daughter would have wet herself with the hilarity of it, had she been old enough to enter the pub�..
Kiki Martini in no way advocates drink driving, binge drinking or anti social drunken behaviour. Drink responsibly kids!