Surviving Bella Weston

Former landlord of the Globe Inn at Hanslope has novelised the experience and challenges of running a country pub in the 21st Century. I hope you might like to share the following with your readers and that we might slow the rate of closure of our country pubs.

John Warrington

The country pub, as an institution, is under threat as never before. Pubs across England and Wales are being closed at a rate of two a day, most of them never to reopen.

Jenny & John Warrington took on the Globe in Long Street, Hanslope in semi-retirement. Here a once busy lunch trade for the local spooks centre, Hanslope Park, had all but dried up with the introduction of flexible working. The restaurant needed to find a new direction.

As a child John had been like a junior Bear Grylls. He had learnt to take trout and game, fowl and conies, and to turn them into great scoff, even for the unsophisticated palate of the adolescent. On taking on the pub in later life they found that it was sited between two shooting estates. Game and forage seemed the logical direction in which to take their cuisine.

He and Jenny disagreed over who should be chef, so Jenny donned the whites. John’s kitchen responsibilities were then limited to prepping game that came in from the keepers for Jenny to perform her culinary magic.

They ensured that their house was listed in the CAMRA good ale guide whilst developing a sophisticated wine list. They took on a young girl who had never worked a bar before and, within her first year, Deagio named her their bar person of the year.

What Amy was doing for the bar business Jenny was doing in spades in the restaurant. She created great and imaginative dishes from whatever came in from the guns. There could be no fixed menu. One week there was wild boar and the next it was all conies and pigeons. On shoot days there would be a glut of pheasant and partridge, with the occasional woodcock; other times they would cope with anything from hares to muntjac deer or a cull of wild geese.

Out of season they would create their menus from the culled nuisance species: pigeons and rabbits; squirrels and signal crayfish. They had five acres and produced beer-fed, large black pigs, for the restaurant; they founded a parallel events catering service offering hog roasts with the tagline, Venison, Boar & So Much More…

When they retired they were mindful of the importance of a village pub to the local community. They looked to hand over to another couple who shared their passion for catering and would retained the pub’s bar as a village hub. Sadly, following a personal tragedy for the new tenants, the business closed permanently.

John had picked up so much in their time running the pub, both about catering and about people, he decided to novelise the experience. Using the Globe as a setting and borrowing from many of the characters that he met there, he has taken his experiences of pub society as the premise for a satirical look at life in the twenty-first century.

Standards in social behaviour have shifted dramatically in recent years. The bar of a country pub, being a lively debating shop, is an invaluable litmus test on social cohesion. John uses this medium in his work, increasing the challenge by placing a vulnerable adolescent in the care of a struggling publican.

Social attitudes and practices from an earlier time have been reappraised in the modern era. Now thoughtful awareness is expected, but tolerance can be short for those not instep with this Newthink. Those isolated by revised cultural attitudes include some older citizens and rural people.

In his satire, “Surviving Bella Weston,” John has placed the title character Bella in his former role, running the bar. The pub is renamed The Lost & Found, and he uses the orphaned 13 year old Danny Preston to try to make sense of the modern world.

Juxtaposed to the adult environment of the pub, Danny discovers an escape in the countryside, but this is sporting country. He is introduced to fishing and shooting. His aunt is rather dysfunctional and, not being fed properly, he learns to cook from the day’s bag, turning trout and game into great cuisine. Some would see Danny Preston as an autobiographical character from the writer’s youth whilst other’s might say there is more of the author in Bella Weston: the old adage is, write about what you know…

Seen through innocent eyes the author appraises the modern day challenges of the country pub environment with its economic complications, tiers of regulation and its constant scrutiny under an army of inspectorates.

Danny assumes some juvenile pretensions as a chef, but there are complications: his social worker is both a vegan and an ardent animal rights champion.

The book has several diverse themes, with Bella trying to access the boy’s trust fund, and a bully at school trying to extort his day to day money. It is a book of internet heroes and villains, volatile celebrity, bullying and the compensation culture, ‘pint and a meal for a tenner’ catering verses celebrity cheffing, financial shenanigans and the cult of inspectorate that regiments and polices standards by which the caterer must work.

Anybody thinking of taking on a pub should read this book. It will prove an invaluable manual for both the publican and the chef. It could also be seen as a manual for 21st century life.

It highlights a once lorded social provider and encourages debate about social cohesion both within licenced premises and in society at large. It is hoped, whilst making poignant observations of society, it may still reinvent the relevance of the pub in your life: cheers.

Surviving Bella Weston is now available through Amazon, ASIN: B0DKXYJL3Z.

Jenny & John’s days at the Globe and illustrations of their fieldcraft catering can be found on the website www.thehogroastservice.co.uk

John writes under the pseudonym Jack Snowdon