Just watching the local news and got the shock of my life when a piece came up featuring a pub I was landlady at back in 1992!!

Back then it was called "The Rifle Butt" but during these politically correct times it is now called the Hart of Duston!!!

The current landlady called Lorraine Wager was on the news telling it like it is about the smoking ban, and how its affected her trade! She looks like a lovely lady and I wish her all the best in her excellent business, and hope that this ban might be lifted!! Its just a shame that this pathetic smoking ban is closing tens of pubs by the day, and when Derek and I are out for a drive we often pass closed, boarded up and sometimes vandalised pubs, which is indeed a very sad sight. It saddens me too that this was my chosen trade in life!! (thank goodness I got out) and I trained heavy and very hard for it, sometimes working almost 70 hours a week!! While I was at the Rifle Butt, my wages budget did not allow for a cleaner 4 days a week so I was up at 7am every morning cleaning, regardless of what time the regulars would let me lock up, which was normally about 2am!! Its not an easy life and I dread to think what its like now!! I admire Lorraine for her candidness in speaking out and I applaude her, loudly!!
The Rifle Butt was the first large pub I had run on my own!!
I think I mentioned somewhere else in my blog that I was there with a chap called Peter McKenna and every morning he would leave me too it at 7am only to return about 1am!! He got sacked because he was never there and I had to carry the ship on my own so to speak!! After Peter went I went with another lady to manage two other pubs in Northampton, before going on my travels....but my time at the Rifle Butt was a miserable and lonely one!! When I moved in there was no carpet up stairs, and it was draughty and damp!! It was an absolute tip upstairs, and down stairs in the two bar's it was not faring much better. I can remember on my first day, thinking "What the heck have I let myself in for?" and my question to myself was indeed justified. The lounge side was almost reasonable at this time ('92) but the bar side was a right "hole"...I could say Peter and I, but I wont as he was never there so I will just refere to me as singular....I had been promised a full referbishment but this never happend. In fact it only happened when I was off traveling in Asia almost two years later. I am happy to say the pub looks superb now!! Although I have not walked through those door since I left!
Good luck Lorraine!!!!!!!!
Your a star!! Keep up the good work!! x