8.41 pm

Ben Macnair

We start at work, just as you leave yours.

By the time you are safely home, we are just getting ready. You are in the shower, scrubbing off the cares of the day, food warming in the oven. We are just getting ready. Putting on our kit. Flexing our muscles, looking out for trouble, so we can stop it, or wade in if we get the chance.

We are the bouncers, the security, the silent tattooed watchers, the faces that show no fear, listen to no bullshit, the protectors of the young kids out for a good time, drinking, pushing their faces too close to those of strangers.

We stop the people we don’t like getting in, and there are plenty of them about, it is part of the job. I like telling the city types that they can’t come in, because I know that their shoes are more expensive than my entire wardrobe, and the floors of the club are sticky with spilled drinks and too much vomit.

We get the underage drinkers in here, as the landlord before the landlord before turned a blind eye to all of that type of thing, unless the Police come in. They came in last week, but we got lucky, it was a Tuesday night. No one ever comes in here on a Tuesday night. Well, they do, but no one of any interest to us or the Police. It is all of the small fry wanting to make a name for themselves.

Get in line Lads, there are only so many chances we can give you before things get too tasty, too rough, like what happened to Darren the other week. He left after that, some kid brought a taser, off his head, and he didn’t know what he was doing. Darren got the worst of it. The hair he has left is still standing on end.

He is on security now at Primark, you know the one in the centre, the biggest one in the whole country apparently. He says it pays well, and he gets home for Seven, just in time for Emmerdale. Give me strength, the bloke is going soft in his old age. I say old age, the old age for bouncers is 40. He is 39.

I am 27, years left in me yet. I could tell you stories about things I have seen, but I would need a good lawyer. A better one than that Laurence Fox bloke. See what happened to him, did you?

I can tell you I wouldn’t let him in here, he would fit in with those city types with their expensive shoes and suits that are just given to them. He would ask me if I knew who he was? Honestly, all these people trying to threaten us.

We don’t know who you are, we don’t care who you know. If I don’t like the look of you, you won’t be coming in. As the lads all say, our gaffe, our rules, capiche?

A little bit of Italian there. I learnt a little bit of Latin for a girl. We all do things like that. Turns out she had a better taste in women than I do.

Love is a hard enough thing for anyone to find. I wish anyone who finds it, for however long they have it, the best. I really do.

We were all here when there was that post on Instagram about the club being a front for all types of things. We are not, we never have been, but once someone puts something online it becomes part of the story, part of the identity.

We all know who started it. Him with the glass eye. We said he couldn’t come in a few times. It wasn’t him, we just have a policy of not letting anyone in after 10.30. If he came early, no problem, we tried to explain the policy to him, but he just wasn’t having any of it.

Still, that’s people for you.

Most of our customers are great, up for the craic, a little bit of banter, a couple of pints from Andrea and Nicky at the bar, playing some darts, a bit of snooker on the second floor, dancing to some eighties classics with Lee on the decks, and then off you pop.

No problem, an early night for you, and an early night for us. Of course, it is never that easy sometimes. We start winding down at 11.30, and the shutters and the doors close at 12.00, everyone gets home on the night bus, they will have missed the trains back to Sutton Coldfield or Lichfield by then, but that is not our problem. Not our River, and certainly not our Fish.

We are here for a good time. Everyone’s good time, as long as times are good, so are we. We are not as were in 2019, but is anyone? Everyone stayed in, cooped up for years with nowhere to go. The dust gathering on the shutters, the pigeon shit on the windows, it all had to be scrapped off and cleaned.

Things were slow to begin with, as they tend to be, but then they picked up, slowly but surely. People weren’t sure at first, they never were. Then they relaxed into it, still cautious, but they were dancing more, moving around, smiling, having a better time than they expected to.

Then winter comes along, people would rather stay in than go out. Hell, we would rather do that. A job in the night-time economy puts a strain on a social life. I would do more with my downtime if there was more to do.

Strangely a cinema matinee by yourself doesn’t have the same appeal as a Friday night out with someone in a group of strangers watching poor scripts propping up a CGI marathon. Honestly, all these superhero films, they destroy whole cities, and probably murder hundreds of people, and we are meant to applaud them for it.

And don’t even get me started on the politicians. All of them, I wouldn’t trust them as far as I could throw them. I mean Boris Johnson was one thing, but Liz Truss? No, that was a step too far. I always felt though that Penny Mordant didn’t get a fair shake of it. Even Darren said that. Darren, if only he hadn’t been tasered, we would be having a right laugh at the lads in their expensive shoes.

Sometimes, I just miss my friends.