I did ok at school, many, many years ago but left with no real idea of what I wanted as a career and with no plan for the future. I spent a lot of the 80's job-hopping, 6 months in a role was about average before I was ready to move on.
Eventually, I settled down a bit (or perhaps grew up a bit) and spent time in some jobs I'm very proud of - I found out I was quite good at selling "stuff" and also a very good business administrator/co-ordinator which, to those who know how disorganised and untidy I can be in my personal life, is hard to believe.
I was working, successfully and happily, for a national charity when DT and I got together in 2015. We'd known each other for a while and neither of us was really looking for another relationship - we both had two previous marriages and two children and were somewhat wary, but it sort of fell into place anyway.
DT studied hospitality at college and has spent his whole working life in the industry (he must like it really, despite his moans!!). Initially, he worked in hotels, working up to General Manager. Then, when he got fed up with corporate politics and wearing a suit, he moved into the pub trade.
When we met, he was running a large town-centre pub with a business partner. I think it's fair to say they weren't always seeing eye-to-eye and he wasn't really happy with the situation. By January 2017, we'd decided we wanted to run a pub together (it sounded so simple then!) and started looking around. We couldn't move too far, due to my family commitments and expected it would take a while to find the right property.
How wrong were we - within 2 weeks the White Lion, a Shepherd Neame tenancy was advertised as available. We both knew the pub from the past and loved the village, just a few miles from where we were living so started the application procedure.
Viewing the property took some time, as the previous tenant had closed but was still living in the pub so we started by writing our application without having seen it - don't tell Sheps but our business plan was mostly written whilst drinking many bottles of red wine in Poznan (Poland), we'd decided we needed to get away to plan and write, so when the trip came up as a cheap deal we went for it. It's a great place for a short break and obviously worked because just over 4 weeks later, we signed up as the new tenants and started this adventure.
It has been a roller-coaster - as a first-time publican I've had so much to learn and so many pre-conceptions have proved to be ridiculous. DT and I can both be stubborn and opinionated with each other and have had to learn to live and work with each other, developing our respective visions for the pub whilst in a relatively new relationship. Pretending to "like" each other in front of customers, when in the midst of an argument isn't fun 😃. But, I love the life despite all the problems we've experienced, we have a great group of regulars and many have become new friends. In the three years since we arrived, we've made many good memories and are looking forward to making plenty more
Next time, I'll tell you a little more about the White Lion
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