Karen Black: Why on earth did I take on a pub?

Hi everyone, I'm the newest recruit to The Publican​'s blogging team.

My name is Karen, and I have just taken over the Ashfields Hotel in Kirkby-in-Ashfield in North Nottinghamshire.

Up until March 2010 I was a civil servant with the Ministry of Justice at Westminster, mostly dealing with IT and Business Change Programmes across Government. For almost twenty years I did this, taking (very) early retirement, before the other civil servants drove me nuts. You see I'm a person with a good deal of common sense, in what was a world bereft of any.

So then, I hear you screaming, 'if you have so much common sense why on earth would you take on a pub?' Quite.

I'm afraid my heart ruled my head on this one. You see I love this pub. Always have, always will. It was part of my childhood, and my young adult life. I watched it go from a thriving business to a run-down hell-hole in just over a year, as the previous landlord was replaced by a series of temporary managers who didn't care for the business, or the community it served.

Letting anyone in and allowing anything to happen usually ends up in disaster, and The Ashfields was no exception to this.

I took over the pub on December 2, 2010, during the worst snowfall in living memory - which ought to have been a clue; even God was giving it the cold shoulder.

I think it might be fun to let you know how I have suffered since this fateful day, on the basis that nothing is funnier than someone else's misery. My perspective will be slightly different to your average lessee, based on the fact that the others have a vague idea what they're on about.

I wish to make it quite clear from the outset I don't have a clue. Things that seem perfectly logical to me, I later discover there's a law against it. Things that make no sense whatsoever have to be implemented without question.

Some of the subjects I hope to cover in future blogs include:

• The minefield of Health and Safety regulations, food safety requirements - I can't even put the shopping away with any credibility - licensing, gambling laws and a hundred or so illegal drugs, and the signs thereof, that are flitting before my eyes.
• The thousands of ways the government can take money off me, money we have not yet made due to the dispatching of previous customers to any other establishment but ours, so the bank manager is looking more and more suspicious every time I walk through the doors.
• The refurb (or lack of it) the repairs (or lack of them) plus the very strange world of barrels, their sizes and discounts and other brewery related issues. Along with the burning question - would the brewery make more money as a printing company, as that seems to be where the majority of their skill base is?
• My particular favourite at the moment is the council, but the utility companies are running a close second, of course this may all change as the week goes on.
• Other landlords - I may have no experience of running a pub, but the bitching​? Trust me - these guys are completely out of their depth on this one.
• Moral dilemmas: e.g. do I call the ambulance when someone slits his wrist smashing my window, or do I let him bleed to death?
• Sky and Premiership Football - Why is it illegal for me to use European suppliers just so we can pay footballers hundreds of thousands of pounds a week, and yet the Co-op is still selling me ham by the gram (whatever one of those is) on a decree from Europe. Despite no one asking for a new measurement system or wanting it, as far as I can make out. Well, school children might, but we can't serve them beer so who cares?

So that's about it for this week. I hope you can join me on my strange journey into bankruptcy over the next few weeks.

It may be the shortest serial blog in history, or it may last the full five years.

Only time will tell, and I'll keep you posted on what time decides.