Two weeks before I was 18, I handed out my CV to a dozen pubs in Dundee.
“You’re not 18,” one member of staff pointed out and I said I would be soon, on March 9.
I’d worked in Wallis (ladies’ clothes, not pies) on the Murraygate and Benetton (not Benidorm as my gran told confused friends) in the Ferry on Saturdays and school holidays since I was 16.
But pulling pints felt grown up and cool – I’d have finally come of age.
The boss from The Globe in the West Port, now Molly Malones, gave me a go.
When I pulled my first pint, the manageress said there was so much froth the customer would need a cone.
Prisoners, riot…and Jim
Particular highlights of my stint – from March to September of 1995 when I moved to Edinburgh for university – included an unexpected visit from some Perth prisoners, which I’ve touched on before.
They had beef with a doorman and used a day release to start a riot – wooden tables and chairs flung everywhere, glass broken, mirrors shattered.
But the incident that stands out most 28 years later (a cliché perhaps but I’ve no idea where it’s gone) is of one night…
But to understand that night, I’ll tell you what happened the week before.
“Where’s Jim?” I asked one of the barmen.
Jim, a slim chap who wore a baseball cap, was a regular – as clockwork.
Every day after his shift (I can’t quite remember what his work was) he’d sit at the bar over a pint or two.
We all knew him, we all liked him. But it struck me he’d not been in for a week or two.
“Dead,” the barman replied.
“What?”
There was a beat of silence.
“Yes, dead,” another colleague said. “Really sudden. Sorry, thought you knew.”
It shook me to my core. Jim had seemed young-ish – well old-ish possibly to a teenage whippersnapper but in retrospect, probably a spritely mid 40-ish year old or so.
It felt unjust, so out of the blue.
‘Your face, it’s a picture’
A week later, pouring yet another pint, I looked up as the main door opened.
Again, I froze. In fact, I was later told I went very pale, as if I’d seen a ghost.
And I had, for there before me stood Jim, resplendent in trademark cap, backlit from the early evening sun and looking very alive.
Everyone – and I mean everyone – from manageress to staff to regulars splayed on stools at the bar burst out laughing.
Such was the hilarity, there was belly-clutching and tears rolling down faces, pointing at me and saying “your face, it’s a picture”.
Turns out Jim had been on his holidays to Tenerife for a fortnight and I’d been very wound up.
My mind wandered down this particular memory lane when thinking of my abiding love of a good prank.
And to sum up what makes our humour, well, a little different, the ghost of Jim is a classic.
Irreverent, slightly dark and at times a little bit wrong but very funny.
And there’s a hierarchy to wind-ups that’s strangely reassuring. The youngest or newest must be initiated before graduating to prank master.
Fast-forwarding decades, would I recommend a part-time bar job in Dundee to my boys in a few years?
As groundings go, I don’t think you’d get better.
I’d go on to work in many bars – in Dundee and Edinburgh – over the years but the wind-ups could never compete with The Globe.
Disclaimer. Upon reading this column to my husband, he told me he thinks I’ve written about this before. I can’t find any trace online or on my laptop of this ghost story and think he may be confusing me telling him a story with what I’ve written.
There comes a time in your marriage, when you’ve heard all their stories. Even the funniest ones get cut off half way with a ‘heard it before’.
I’m approaching ten years of writing the column and after 500 plus, perhaps forgetting what I’ve told you many years ago (like with my husband) was one day inevitable.
Then again, maybe it’s the first time.
Either way, I hope you enjoy – in time for a macabre Halloween set-up inspiration.
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