The Railway, Edgware part 1: Blood, sweat and tears.

There was a time when I was actually considered to be pretty good at running pubs. To be fair I'd generally been sent into chaos and done pretty well. I'd be sent to pubs that were either for sale or struggling or both. Sometimes they'd been closed when I got there and sometimes they'd been run into the ground. Always though... always, they were a challenge, usually a fun one but a challenge none the less. The theory was that I was pretty good at rectifying problem pubs, not a reputation I ever wanted and not one I'd recommend. I was good at diplomacy and talking shit, talents I've still got! I'd walked into some shitholes and some chaos but this place was pretty spectacular.

The Railway Hotel, Station r'd, Edgware. 

The place was huge, as you walked through the front door there was a bar room to the right and a lounge to the left with the bar itself forming the shape of a long unused staple bridging the two rooms. There was a huge kitchen central and set back between the rooms. The massive car park was located around the back, you could drive through and between ourselves and next door by turning left just after the bus stop and going through the tunnel. Some nice picnic tables and seating were out front. A function room which was accessible up stairs on the left of the building as we look here which took up half of the second floor, another kitchen there too and 4 lodging rooms that the staff had been using. Then there was a 3rd floor with the management accommodation. The cellars were like a rabbit warren, with 2 separate areas for the upstairs and downstairs bars, tunnels, storage rooms and so much space it was crazy. The restaurant next door (later an off license) which is the building on the right of the picture belonged to George Michaels' dad. Sounds lovely doesn't it?! There's a YouTube video made recently highlighting its current plight, I'm guessing when he mentions 2007 and closing, that was when I left, click on the link if you want a look The Railway Hotel, Edgware road

The only part of the pub that was trading when I rolled into London was the front bar. I'd got a van load of my stuff, a baby Cade and an unhappy Mrs Freer. The car park was overgrown and hardly usable but I found a spot and looked over my seemingly impressive new domain. However, it was far from idyllic. There was unused furniture and crap clogging up the lounge area, the kitchen was full of cooking equipment, fridges, freezers, and black bags full of rubbish blocking the room and causing chaos with access to the first flight of stairs up to the staff lodgings.

Three of the 4 rooms there were empty of people but still full of the crap they'd created and left. Mike, my one member of live in staff was in the fourth, There was a door through to the function room kitchen which was again full of unused equipment, so much of it, and barely navigable through to the function room itself. The function room was not quite so choked up as it was huge but it was still adorned with unused bits and bobs of pub furnishings and random general waste. I fought through the mountains of pub rubble and finally got to the upstairs accommodation and the first thing I noticed was dried blood splattered up the wall! Great... I felt the piercing stare from behind me of a now very unhappy and rightly concerned Mrs Freer. She didn't want to come here, didn't like it and wanted to go home. It certainly was going to be a challenge but my optimism was in full flow so I sent a somewhat reassured JJ back downstairs and out to get some essentials. I finished my grand tour by looking around the rest of our rooms, thankfully they weren't as bad and were at least empty and large, everything about the place was off the scale in size. I sat on the stairs, fag in hand and thought to myself: 'right then Royston, let's clean the blood away and we've got some work to do here'. I was absolutely buzzing, the place was so big, so full of history and had so many stories, I just wanted to make sure my story there involved giving it 100%.

The Sheer magnitude of the task was daunting. I knew it was down to me but everywhere you turned there was work to do. Every room was not just a challenge but in need of a miracle. Even the bar that was open was disgusting. It was one of those pubs that you wipe your feet on the way out! The carpet was so bad that if you stood still for 30 seconds you were in danger of staying there forever. I'd never seen anything so bad and Immediately got onto my area manager guy and ordered a skip with an estimation of 4 to 5 loads to be cleared.

It was overwhelming to be fair. I tried to prioritise and figured if I start in the car park then at least customers could park outside and get into the pub. Stage one, so to speak. But even this job was a ridiculous undertaking by myself. I vowed to get myself some help and did what I could, clearing roughly 15 spaces out of the available 30ish and piling junk high and ready for collection when my first skip arrived.

I'd met with Mike, lovely chap and a bit of a stoner. So much so that he had the whole floor emanating a discernible fragrance! He was worried about his job, understandably so but I couldn't exactly offer him many reassurances. I explained that I'd been sent down to tidy the place up and make it salable. He seemed genuinely amazed that the brewery thought it would sell and told me he thought they were closer to having it condemned (turns out it was a listed building and cant be demolished). His bar hours though were safe as I needed cover while I continued to try and get the place back to something like a pub of its size and history should be, or at least one that was slightly less distressed! There was no record of him living there so I agreed he could continue as long as he paid a bit of rent. I also gave him the option of switching rooms to any of the others but he was happy where he was for now. My other member of staff was Romana, a lovely warm and kind Slovak girl and she had a big muscly boyfriend called Laco. I had the same meeting again and assured her of continued part time hours but emphasized the lack of job security going forward. Just as importantly though, I got her to help me recruit Laco for some of the backbreaking work I had planned. early days but Things were progressing nicely.

The living accommodation was looking a lot better after a good clean and I'd been authorized to get professional cleaners in for the carpets (and walls). I'd been asking the regulars if anyone knew why there was blood splatter but so far got nowhere with that mystery. Cade was happy but me and JJ weren't in the best of ways and were looking into sending her home for a month as we did on a regular basis when she felt down with homesickness. There were arguments and tears but I was so distracted by the work that needed doing we didn't really spend that much time together. London was at least offering up potential new activities for her and we'd found out about a place called New Marldon that was supposed to be a mini Korea town. We planned a visit and tried to make things work.

My next mission was to get the lounge open. I figured with that available to use I could at least move the customers out of the bar and get it somewhere near decent. I'd enlisted Laco and between us we'd cleared most of the junk. The first skip was gone and we were well into filling number 2. My area manager, Christian I think he was called, had been dumping stuff here from other closed or sold pubs for a while so I'd been onto him and got some of the stuff taken away by him as well. we shuffled the odd bits of furniture around, made a cozy corner with some random sofas and chairs and it actually looked quite decent. I was only a week or so into the job but real progress was being made.

The carpet had to go, me and Laco ripped it out. It stank, it was rotten in places and stubborn to move in others. I guess it had been there for at least 50 years so it wasn't impressed by me rocking up and trying to dispose of it. I left the barely worn lounge side and cut it off just after the left side of the entrance, skip 2 was now good to go. There were bigger problems ahead though as it seemed to have been nailed down. There were literally thousands of small sharp protruding nails sticking up from the floorboards all over the bar floor. They took us forever to get out but with a claw hammer, pliers and sheer determination we strived and sweated through. I've never seen so many poxy nails but we cleared them and once the floor was clean and clear the whole place took on a whole new feel (and smell!)

My regulars were a fresh blast of multiculturalism. I had the old school geezer London lads, a fair few travellers came in from the nearby site on the A44, then there were the Europeans with friends of Romana and Laco coming in, originating from all over Europe. The London lads were hilarious and would always be very respectful, they called me 'Guvnor' which I must admit I quite liked, it felt like I was in Eastenders! One lad, Liam,  came running in one day and asked me to hide a bag behind the bar. I just did it, thinking maybe he'd got his girlfriend a surprise or something. Then though, 5 minutes later two coppers strolled in, questioned and searched him, and then asked me if I'd seen any 'suspicious behaviour' from him! I said I hadn't so they thanked me and went on their way and he was instantly my new best mate, even promising to tell me the tale of the upstairs walls, after he'd been to see a man about a dog... now could he have his bag back please guv!

He came back later and explained that he'd had a fall out with a local gangster and had tried to hide from him in my accommodation one day. He got tracked down and grassed up (why he was so impressed I didn't grass I think) and the gangster guy had come upstairs with a knife and slashed him with it. It wasn't meant to be fatal but it was meant to convey a message that he wasn't to be messed with! Proper Krays style stuff going on and this was 2007! Mystery solved and my mind reassured a little that at least no one had been murdered upstairs!

I wanted to get the kitchen open, at least for bar snacks but Laco had a better plan. He convinced me that if we could get the function room operational he could fill it with the massive local community of Slovaks, Czechs, Polish and Romanians that just didn't have anywhere else to socialise together. We could offer bottled beers and cooked food from each country, alleviating homesickness for many (which i knew all about) and providing decent income as well. Seemed like a good plan but he also wanted to use the kitchen up there and so we had a mammoth task ahead.

I got the labrynth of cellars cleared as my next step because that was basically full of burnable or skippable rubbish. We pretty much filled skip 3 and burnt a million cardboard boxes and then got the link up to the function room working for the draft ales. there was a 5 and a half pint run up to there, meaning it took 5 and a half pints of liquid to fill the pipe from the cellar before it got to the pump in the bar of the function room, massive in pub terms. Everything was ship shape down there and we then sorted the spare staff lodging rooms out a bit. I knew Laco would lose interest in helping me when he had his part of the project completed so tried to get all the heavy work done before we started to focus on getting the function room open.

The downstairs bars were getting busier. I was putting a karaoke night on on Fridays and the travellers loved it. They were turning up in ever increasing numbers and filling the lounge on weekend nights. Blanket on the ground by Billie Jo Spears and Kenny Rogers and Dolly Partons' Islands in the stream were my new go to songs and things were going well! I needed more staff and when Romana came in with a friend who was absolutely stunning I tried everything in my power to get her on board. Martina joined our expanding team and was an instant draw for the European crowd (She was Czech) as well as being pretty enough to instantly win over the locals as well.

JJ was better but still not great. We'd done a bit of London tourism and been down for a Korean meal and some Korean shopping which helped but things were far from good. She was busy with a young Cade and I was busy investing myself with the constant improvements required by the pub. Money was coming in well, I was salaried and the bonus structure that had been set was based on the takings before I got there so I was smashing the bonuses as well with the lounge doubling our take, and the upstairs was taking shape and ready to improve things further.

We finally got upstairs finished, the kitchen operational and stocked it from shops all over london that Laco knew. The entrance was literally falling to pieces around the doorway but we bodged it and cleaned and tidied and moved the remaining unused bits and bobs down to the newly spacious cellar. We had a grand opening night, DJ and euro dance music, Slovakian sauerkraut (which was delicious) and a menagerie of continental beverages. It was amazing, It was busy, it was successful... Not Roy like at all! I staggered the closing times to keep my different clientele leaving at 30 minute intervals. 11 o'clock was the bar, 11;30 the upstairs and the travellers from the lounge at 12, mostly because there was no way they'd leave until last no matter which way round I planned it and this gave them a good 30 minutes of drinking up time to enjoy.

What, you might ask, could go wrong? I guess you need to pop back for part 2 to find out...

Korea take 2: Exit strategy

“Wake up kids, we gotta go”
“Go where Daddy?” Baby; yawning, stretching from her cramped little bunk bed in her shared little bedroom.
“What’s happening Daddy?” Cade; brave, instantly alert to my tension from the other bunk. He scans his room, packed suitcase, a hundred questions in his eyes.
“We’re going home guys, gonna go back to England for a bit”.
Smiles, actual smiles and happiness and excitement despite all the chaos, despite it being nearly 2am on a school night. If I didn’t believe 100% that I was making this decision for the right reasons before I woke them, I do now.
Determination and resolve are given fresh impetus from the 2 confused but excited little faces peering at me hopefully as they climb out of bed and chatter and giggle with each other about this massive development that’s surely rocked their world.
“There’s your cases guys, I’ve packed your clothes but get your favourite toys and anything else you want to take and pack them”
“Where’s mummy?” Cade, so bright and clever hits the crunch point straight away. Where is his mum? If I knew that then this probably wouldn’t be happening. Definitely wouldn’t be happening like this anyway.
“She’s not coming with us Cade, not yet anyway, let’s just get our stuff together and go”.
Confusion and concern now combine with the excitement and my heart strings pull.
“Come here you 2, big hug and then let’s go see the planes at the airport!”

It’s done, the toughest bit is done, and we’re ok. There’s worries and there’s uncertainty but overall the adventure aspect is taking hold and as my phone rings I leave them packing. It’s a call I’ve got to take, one of about 25 things involving 2 friends and 2 family members that need to come together for this exit strategy to work.

It’s Keith, the first person out of the 4, he's my best mate out here just now. He's seen the writing on the wall, it's been pretty transparent. Some of our fights have lasted days on end and I've been on his sofa (literally and figuratively) plenty in recent weeks. I need his help, I need money. I’ve got what amounts to about £50 and that ain’t getting me home. He's step one on a list of things and people that need to come together and I know he'll do what he can. He lives in the same block as us and he knows my situation. I’ve been boring him with it for long enough and my threats to leave are old hat to him now. The story is a little different tonight though, it’s not at the bottom of a pint glass for one. It’s a sober, calculated decision and it’s happening, right now at just after 2am!

Keith helps, but it’s not gonna be enough. I can get to the airport now though, and that’s the start I wanted. Get to the airport and get some tickets, old school, like you see on the movies. Just walk up to the counter, buy 3 tickets and get on the plane... simples right?!

The kids are in the car and we're packed. I haven't got much in the way of belongings but i'm taking minimal my stuff and maximum kids stuff in the one big suitcase I have. I was once stopped in Singapore airport for having only a book with me. No other luggage checked in and no hand luggage. It was deemed unusual by airport security and I got taken into a little side room and questioned for nearly an hour, that's a different story but it shines a light on my general theory of travel: take as little as possible because you can always get new stuff at your destination, I think I've read too many Jack Reacher novels over the years!

Step two, or person 2 is Mckeown. He's from way back and been in Seoul forever now but back in the day he needed a place to stay and he needed money and I helped on both counts. He lived at mine for months and whilst he's helped me back and paid me back over the years I hope I still have enough equity with him for the required favour. I call him and he's more that happy to help, absolute legend! The problem is that it's now about 4am and I haven't woke him, he's still up. So by my calculations, I can get to him for around 5 and I'm more than a little concerned that he'll have passed out somewhere by then!
Mckeown is my wing man, I need him for the unpredictable. I've told him I need money which I probably will but it's more than that. I don't know what I need, we need. That's why I've got him on stand by. Stay awake Mckeown, stay awake... On a wing and a prayer I rumble on towards Seoul.

The transport is my car. Well it's my sister in laws car officially as registering it to me was too complicated apparently. This though will be helpful as my intention is to leave it in the short stay car park and by the time the notification goes out to its official owner we'll be long gone but the car can go back for JJ to sell or use or whatever, no longer my problem.

Person 3 is Dad, he's paying for the flights. His is the easiest part of the plan, he's told me to call him when I need the tickets and he'll make the payment for them. No questions, no doubts. He's got too much faith in me sometimes and if I tell him I need something he'll do everything in his power to get it to me. I've not really had to give any details, he doesn't care, he's just there for me. I love him for this and right now it's exactly the faith we need to get home.

By the time I hit Seoul it's just gone 5, the kids are snoozing in the back, catching up on lost sleep despite the commotion. I love how the magic of motion can still even the most hyper kids. The first glitch kicks in as my call to Mckeown goes unanswered. I've no time to go on a search for him and only have his last known whereabouts as 'somewhere in Songtan'. Seoul is huge, 13million people in an ever expanding metropolis. I know bits of it but a lot of my knowledge is nearly 10 years old, a lifetime in this city that loves to reinvent itself every 5 minutes. It's hopeless trying to find him so I keep on motoring,  it's another 30-40 minutes to Itaewon and the airport, I don't want to wake the kids again and so I leave my wing man and try to figure out the next step. Maybe I won't need him, maybe it will be fine.

I roll into the airport, dump the car in the farthest corner of the underground parking leaving it open with the keys in the glove box. I've never really experienced crime in Korea, it's a whole different world and the idea that someone would steal my car doesn't even enter my head. My main concern is that it will get reported before I'm gone so after some thought I double back and stick a 4 hour parking ticket on it just to be sure.

Glitch number 2 comes at the ticket office when I discover there's no flight for 12 hours and the flight in 12 hours only has 15 seats left on it. The 15 seat thing didn't become an issue until glitch number 3. As I'm asking about the flight the ticket guy wants to see passports so I hand them over. After about 4 seconds and a rudimentary scan of the kids passports he shakes his head in typical Korean guy fashion and says what appears to be his only proficient word in English, 'No'!
I try to push him but my Korean, whilst being better than his English, is just not up to the complexity of travel, passports and visa talk which I'm presuming is the issue. He's not interested in my pleas and the only word I can glean from him is 'bulganenhay' which from my disjointed and limited knowledge is either a type of food or the word for 'impossible'... great.
He's about as useful as a chocolate tea pot but thankfully there's an assistant and she's at least trying to help and sends me off on an excursion to the other side of the airport to the visa office. Time to adjust and adapt, again.

The airport is starting to come to life. It was quiet when we came in, the early morning calm before the storm. But things are opening up now and travellers are striding purposefully to check ins and gates. I get us about half way between the ticket office and the visa office and we set up camp. Twelve hours is a long time at their age but Cade and Baby are actually having a ball, they will be tired but they can sleep on the plane... if we ever get on the bloody plane. I stake claim to a practical little corner of airport benches and crack out some colouring books and toys. I explain to Cade where I need to go and show him the route between the 2 offices and tell him to stay with Baby. I still have no doubts that leaving is the right thing to do but it's not proving easy, I head off to try and find out what the hell is going on with their passports.

The visa office staff have better English than my mate down the hallway but not that much better. the main guy shows me the page in the kids passports that has a kind of visa printed on. The problem is that it basically gives the kids legal Koreanness. It also means that they can't leave the country. I keep asking questions but they're seemingly the wrong ones and it's only when I venture the word 'cancel' that things take a step forward. I've had to keep popping back to the kids and time is ticking on, I also went to check with the girl at the ticket office and there's 4 more been sold on my flight, 11 left. Not good Royston, not good at all. 'Cancel' however has at least been met with a less negative response, especially when combined with the action of making a cross with my arms in front of me, definite progress! The guys ask me to come back in 30 minutes, apparently there's a shift change at 9am and the day shift might be able to help.

Mckeown finally resurfaces and answers his phone. I give him an update on events transpiring and he agrees that I should be able to buy my way out of the problem by cancelling the kids visas. The three of us get a bit of breakfast down by the ticket office and the helpful girl waves at me as she's hanging up her phone. I look across and she arranges her hands to show me 9 fingers... fuck.

I get back to the visa office just after 9 and the whole crew has changed. Not just changed but apparently abandoned and re staffed. No one knows what I'm talking about and it takes another half an hour to get close to the stage I'd been at an hour earlier. Finally it seems like I can cancel the visas but the new guys in the office don't want me to. They are trying to explain that once the cancellation is done then the kids won't be considered as Korean any more and therefore would only be able to come back into the country as tourists. This is an action they can't even comprehend so it's painfully slow progress but eventually they accept that this is what I want and they just need payment. I call Mckeown so he can pay over the phone, no answer...

I have to leave the office after 3 failed calls, there's a queue of people backing up behind me. It costs about £400 to cancel the visas, I've got about £280. I've also got about 10% battery left on my phone. I've also got to feed the kids again soon, and again before the plane is due to leave. Money is tight, time is tight, I'm happy to leave penniless but I've got to have enough pennies to get me to the plane. I walk back towards the ticket office trying to call Mckown and trying to get a pen and paper in case I have to revert to payphones. I ignore Mr useless and signal with an imaginary pen on imaginary paper to the girl, she obliges and signals back with 7 fingers and an 'i'm sorry' expression on her face. Everything is getting tight...

I start the stroll back, trying to convey confidence and surety as I pass the kids despite increasingly feeling the opposite. Mckeown answers, tired and fed up of being disturbed by the sound of him but ready to help, thank fuck! I keep him on the phone despite the drain on my charge, I'm not losing him again. It takes a few minutes to get back to the guy I was dealing with but at just after 10am after nearly 4 hours of airport chaos I get back to him. He pays the fee over the phone and as I'm thanking him my phone dies. Cheers Mckeown, life saved and the balance of power forever in your favour. The office guy takes a permanent marker and scrawls a big black cross on the offending pages and that's it, done! I'm too relieved to even begin to compute the fact that I could of done that, and for nothing! Obviously there's more to it as computers and statuses are updated and we're good to go. It's not set yet though and those 7 pretty fingers and my lack of phone are now foremost in my mind.

I run, all the way the length of the departure lounge but not towards the ticket office. I run to the payphones, waving at my bemused kids as i pass them. I can't waste the time it would take to see how many seats there are on the plane. I call Dad, just after 6pm in England, no issue, and jot down his credit card details. The call is as brief as possible and I tell him I'll call him back with the flight details if I can get us on it. I run again.

My mate is nowhere to be seen and as I start to worry about more fresh faces and shift changes my helpful little saviour appears. I hand over the passports complete with 'amended' pages and after readjusting the other passengers she seats us all together and books us on the last 3 seats that day to England! My mate makes a reappearance just as we're finishing up and as I take ownership of my tickets home I can't resist and wave them at him with a cheery 'an bulganenhay' (not impossible)!

We're set and the kids are even more excited now that the tickets are real and the journey is progressing. We move out of our basecamp, head for lunch in burger king and then check in. I'm concerned that the cars' ticket has run its course and it may be getting reported at any moment. Thankfully now, my phone is dead and JJ obviously hadn't been home up until the point it died so I've had no calls. Once we're checked in and based in the departure lounge I'm pretty confident we're safe and the homeward bound journey can gather wings.

It's a long old flight back to Heathrow but my Dad's there waiting when we land and he transports us across the country to Somerset and the final person of the four I needed: My sister, she welcomes us with open arms and we rest and explore and plan out a new life back in England. It's not going to be easy, it never is but we're home and the green grass and church spires and crappy weather and sarcasm and everything England have never felt so wonderful.