The Shirker’s Rest, New Cross - what my first bar shift in 25 years taught me
My last bar job was in a 90's locals' pub. This was much more fun
To read in detail about the Shirker’s Rest, I wrote this piece here for Pellicle.
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Disclaimer: this newsletter often mentions beer and pubs. You do not have to read this if your life has been affected by substance abuse.
I am a journalist who writes for BBC Culture, Pellicle and Vittles. I was named Beer Writer of the Year in 2023 by the British Guild of Beer Writers.
Having brewed a beer with St Austell, a salted bitter with kelp, I decided to work a shift at the Shirker’s Rest in SE14, to serve it to the regulars. The night was a huge success and it left me pondering the experiences of working in pubs in the past and the present.
My last bar job was at the Crown in Cowley, near Uxbridge, West London and it might seem daft to compare a modern micropub in 2024 to a local backwater boozer in 1999 but there were as many similarities as there were differences.
Cowley’s really West, West London as you can walk for a few minutes and cross the border into Buckinghamshire. It’s semi-rural with a nearby canal - the locals back then often called the dwellers there “water gypsies”.
The Crown is forever imbued in memories which help vanquish any nostalgia I may hold for the 90s or early 00s. Nothing was cool or New Britannia about the Crown.
It was old-fashioned then with my time straddling the smoking ban, the rise of the mainstream far-right views - a lot of chuntering from the locals about immigration - and the dwindling era of half and Light. (This London phenomenon I suspect remained at the pub due to older drinkers because the half was a generous pour in a pint).
That said Foster’s outsold most of the cask - London Pride, Bombardier and one guest - and all the women (90% clientele were men, though) would drink wine, gin and tonic or even wine spritzers. Never seen anyone buy the latter anywhere else.
Whatever I served, I never met anyone whom I really enjoyed being with, which was a leitmotif of my life at the time as I was struggling to fit in as a university student and angry with my lot.
I do still remember the locals’ names, though, and they thought of themselves as a class above the pub across the road which showed sports on TV and was unbearable when Chelsea played.
Some of their views haunt me today and to get through shifts I would just ignore what they said about politics. I remember them being pretty worked up by Mark Thomas’s (excellent) Comedy Product as they hated direct action - you also don’t want to know what they said about the murder of Damilola Taylor.
You can see why I hadn’t worked in a pub for 25 years, basically, and I rarely visited the Crown off shift. (Although I did a few times, which shows you how poor the drinking options were for Brunel University students then.)
At the Shirkers, the staff members all visited on my shift despite only two working with me - departing bar manager James Burton and Flo.
There is a small bar but the idea is cross-table chat and the locals are the opposite to the Crown’s. Leftwing - in general - and not low-level depressed. One guy wanted to talk to me about Brexit and I instinctively adopted an imaginary forcefield to prevent any emotional pain. “Bond-like neutrality,” as Mark in Peep Show once said.
There was no need as this was an arch-Remainer in an arch-Remain area, so he wasn’t going to ‘blame the immigrants’ but I still feel a bit icky when I put my views out there so nodded along. I guess I’ve been indoctrinated into believing the customer-server relationship must be deferential. Which I don’t think is the Shirker’s’ philosophy.
James is pretty acerbic - not in, say, Clerks terms as I’ve never seen him spit water on a customer boring him. Yet. But there was a vibe that the drinker-bartender relationship was more of a partnership built on trust.
Although James implored me to say less to customers as my over-explaining of beer (flavour profiles, ingredients, brewing history (!)) was putting “too much pressure on the customer”.
And herein lies the paradox, James might look and sound a bit slackerish but he worked the bar, cellar and pub interior with a quiet professionalism that’s only noticeable from a staff perspective.
He organised the computerised till - yes, I am that old that the last shift I did was manual and involved entirely making change when presented with cash - so that the GUI (graphic user interface) matched exactly how the pumps were displayed IRL.
He was unhampered by the cellar which was tiny, organising the barrels proficiently. And he knew which customers would try cask and which wouldn’t. Having literally brewed a beer for this occasion, I couldn’t help feeling rejected when a few people heard my spiel and went for their usual beer style of kegged pale ale.
James foresaw this happening - mainly because he had the same experience when he brewed a beer with Elusive. (I was touched though when Mack, a diehard London Black drinker, tried a pint of my salted bitter - see, super nice people - and Kelp! was the most popular pint on the day.)
The one thing that depressingly hadn’t changed was glass collecting, washing and stacking. I even think the Crown had the same type of mini dishwasher.
Both pubs suffered from having too few glasses - interestingly, though, in Zone 6,000 where the Crown was straight glasses were hugely popular but in Zone 2 dimpled jars were the king. Whatever the case there were too few pint pots and a pressure on collection even when the pub didn’t look that busy.
I also felt the same hunger pangs as in the 90s when I wasn’t doing much but this was a lot rarer at the Shirker’s. It shows how I’m perhaps too constantly engaged with work and have too much screen use.
I described this to a friend who was there and she said “you’re actually out here doing stuff” as I’m forever simultaneously connected and disconnected with people using my computer and phone.
This was the most productive reason for me being there, especially when I heard the gossip from locals about positive or negative experiences they have had with beer.
These weren’t ‘experts’ giving their hot takes but insight into what people really think about brands, taprooms and other pubs. (Apparently a popular local craft brewery hadn’t dispatched their beer advent calendars yet!)
But most of all working in a pub gives you a rare gift of seeing the space for what it truly is even if that is amorphous - at first it went from being a slew of self-contained tables and then a communal mass with multiple conversations tied together with the love of beer. And, at times when I wasn’t part of the fun or the work, I had a vision of it being a high-street shop - the marvel of the micropub unwrapped.
The most shameful confession is that for a few seconds when facing random customers I felt like I over-explained to somehow overcompensate that I was more than a bartender - maybe James’s intervention was warranted. That I had somehow failed in my career as a writer and become perma-frosted since 1999, which reveals how I may subconsciously view service industry jobs as somehow inferior to other pursuits.
Or maybe it’s slightly ridiculous that a man who is aged 46 is working a job with people a lot younger, nodding along when they talk about tattoos. Again that’s something that says more about me and even a bit a bit about society.
But I’m keen to discover more about my faults and prejudices and will be doing a monthly shift because this is the safest space I’ve pulled pints in. You should join me on January 23, 2025!
James’s last day is tomorrow so if you fancy giving him a good send-off rock up to the Shirker’s. Sadly, I can’t make it!