I suspect, like many licensees, I experience dark days. Days when everything seems black. When income doesn't meet expenditure. Bills await payment. When it all seems terribly wrong.
I am having staffing issues. I believe I have solved the problem when I take on a member of staff only to discover that it has created another problem. Some of it is training. Some of it is common sense. But it hasn't solved the original problem.
This morning, after five months of begging a utility company to assume the responsibility of supplying our electricity I get a letter headed "we are sorry you have chosen to discontinue using us". What? I haven't! Where has this come from?
Black days. Sometimes this life seems so desperate and lonely.
It is easy to see why so many of us drink perhaps more than we should.
But then there are those special things that make it all worthwhile. Little things. Trivial things.
I have no favourite customers here. I try to treat everyone even-handedly. But there are a few out there who, when they walk into the pub seem to make it all worthwhile. They share my vision. They believe in what we are doing. They matter because they make us feel we matter. They will lift us.
Then, this morning I tried, again, to make my smoker work. After ten minutes it started to smoulder. For the next few hours the car park was filled with a glorious smell of oak smoke. Ahh! It will work!
Things are looking good again!