The Jolly Crocker

At the beginning of the Summer in 2002 I moved down to London with Debbie, my unlucky number 1 to go in search of a training contract, a compulsory step on the ladder to qualifying as a solicitor. Deb was a well established and high profile nanny, she had managed to secure a job with a wealthy family who owned several art galleries throughout London, the maternal grandfather having been a significant player in the art world throughout his life. Deb had already worked for Sir Christopher Evans, John Barrie, a mistress to a very high profile horse trainer who had two secret children with him, THE Greek shipping family, and a host of other millionaires, whether co-operate and/or renowned in the city. Once you get people like that on your CV other such employers will follow. This latest family owned a colossal Georgian end terrace town house in St John’s Wood, near the top of Edgware Road. The rooms were incredibly large with very high ceilings, white washed walls, original stripped doors, floor boards and features throughout, all left untreated, natural and pale grained like the dried drift on pristine seashore. The place also had a very large ground floor extension surrounding most of the back half of the house allowing for a vast open plan kitchen with what must have been a twenty foot long table, art gallery flooring with underground heating beneath and white washed walls with art gallery style lighting. There were also strategically yet sparsely placed pieces of art throughout the house. There were three children, all of whom attended the same school, along with the children of Jonathan Ross, and of Annie Lennox, who would subsequently become Deb’s employer. I remember the youngest daughter of the family was very sweet; she was into insects in a big way. The middle boy was a bit of a tearaway, the family felt that he had a few issues that perhaps my being there from time to time might help; I have to say that his name would have been my chosen name for a boy too. The eldest girl was chat room crazy, eleven going on 20. The family owned a flat just around a ninety degree corner from their home, it was on Edinburgh Street if my memory serves me right; that was the nanny flat, I was to be allowed to live there rent free with Deb, and very nice it was too. On the actual ninety degree corner of both streets was The Jolly Crocker pub. It was there that I found bar work to tide me over whilst I found a training contract with a solicitor, any solicitor, anywhere within Greater London, and if not, anywhere. I’d already written well over a hundred letters and gotten nowhere, so it was time to bang on doors. The Jolly Crocker was like no other pub I’d ever seen or set foot in. It was Victorian and heavily architecturally styled, it was also huge. The building had three very tall storeys and a sprawling cellar beneath. There were so many hanging baskets across its front sides and ivy hanging from its various crevasses that you had to part the foliage like a beaded door curtain to gain access. The actual wooden doors would simply be left open to allow for this, it gave the inside a kind of magical feel, like a pub hidden at the bottom of a secret overgrown garden, it also looked beautiful when the light streamed in through the moving gaps. There were two bars, separated by ornate wooden panelling containing engraved glass in parts and a door with rather darkened dirty stained glass, which at night played tricks on you, it always looked like there was somebody standing behind it when the lights went out long after kick out. The bar on the left of the building as you entered, Edinburgh Street side, was a highly decorative red marble bar with stunning brass features, Chesterfield furniture, glass top carved wooden tables, a huge beautifully carved marble fireplace, red carpet and a grand piano. At night we would light T-lights and line them along the bar, an elderly pianist would then turn up from 9:00pm to play. The bar on the right was of the same age but a tired pale brown dusty old Oak bar, it too had nice original features, but they were made entirely of wood. It was this side that let in a lot more light and which housed the television. The pub was run by a Maori girl and her English fella. She was absolutely lovely, hard working, great fun, extremely kind and a wonderful cook. He was a bit of a dickhead, but tended to work from home doing some freelance nonsense. Home used to be above the pub, and most of the staff who passed through on their travels lived up there too. There was after all two massive floors of living quarters up there. Apparently the parties were legendary, I never did find out why they pulled the plug on it, it had probably been the kill joy blood sucking brewery that eventually killed the place. The Maori girl did all of the food, there was a huge kitchen down in the football pitch cellar which also contained an old pulley lift for the beer and loads of nooks and crannies to explore. The food was good quality pub grub cooked well and as a member of staff you were always kept well fed. There were two types of drinkers in the Jolly Crocker, ‘old school’ retired gentlemen gangsters and honest hard working blokes of the same generation who were still working hard. You can no doubt guess who drank in which bar. There were real characters on both sides. We had a rogue resident psycho Millwall supporter who drank on the oak side; he lived in a barge right in-between Little Venice and Camden, St John’s Wood side of London Zoo and Regents Park, the park where incidentally I had the pleasure of walking into Elle McPherson by accident. The whole time I served the Millwall man he had a rather foxy journalist in tow; she was gathering material for a book that she planned to write on him. He had been rather prolific in his day and I have to say, after a few beers he could turn pretty nasty, and like being face to face with a grizzly, you just had to hold your ground, show no fear and keep pouring beer. In the summer months the softest local and regular was a St Bernard dog who used to visit every Friday with his owner and sit outside. Everyone knew that he liked a beer and he wandered from table to table getting ash trays filled up with beer at each one. One Friday night he got so drunk he passed out and wouldn’t be stirred at last orders. He was a big dog, he must have weighed 12 or 13 stone and his owner had to get him home. I had an idea and ran down to Tesco’s to nick a trolley. It took four of us to lift him in, even then it was only his back half that would fit, his front half had to be held up by two fellas as his owner wheeled him down the street. Poor dog! But he was back the following Friday and like us he hadn’t learnt his lesson. For me, one of the most impressive characters was Stan of the marble side. Stan was an ex-gangster, he had run with the Krays in his day and still dressed like he did to the day. The man was well into his sixties, overweight but impeccably presented, certainly at the start of a daily drinking session anyway. He would always wear a three piece suit, even on the hottest days, he told the time from a traditional gold pocket watch kept on a chain in his waistcoat. Stan always had a hefty wad of cash in a money clip and drank heavily. His tipple was a pint glass full of ice, an empty pint glass and a bottle of white wine, God knows how many bottles he’d plough through on a night, but he always left looking down trodden and sad. I know the saying curiosity killed the cat, but after I felt Stan had grown to value my quiet and quick service without the need to say anything, I asked him why he seemed a little sad. His eyes looked fierce and I thought he was going to crush my head like ice on the bar, then he settled and brought out his wallet. He opened it up and showed me a picture of a petit, fun looking lady, she’d clearly been a blonde in her day, ‘That was the love of my life,’ he said, ‘She passed away last year.’ Nothing more was said. One evening as the nights were drawing in, there was some commotion as one of the regulars came into the oak bar, it was the bus driver, he was clearly very scared and very upset about something. His friends gathered him in, sat him down and then sat around him, there was a pretty intense chat then took place. One of the friends then came to the bar and ordered a double brandy and asked if Stan was in, I confirmed he was. The lad took the brandy to the bus driver and then walked through the door that divided the bars, it was the first time I’d seen anyone other than staff use it. This chap then went to have a word with Stan, it didn’t last very long, but I got the impression it was just to arrange a conference elsewhere. A week or two later I overheard people talking in the oak bar. Apparently the bus driver’s daughter had got caught up with the Yardies and had been pinched coming into Heathrow full of drugs for them. She’d cut a deal with police and been placed in a safe house somewhere in Scotland. Unfortunately the Yardies next port of call was her parents. Anyway, they’d terrorised the shit out of the poor old bus driver and his wife, they’d threaten to kill them if they didn’t come up with £15k for their losses within a certain timescale. Anyway, Stan had agreed to move in with the couple and the next time the Yardies rocked up Stan had opened the door. He’d apparently grabbed the kid with the gun and put it against his own head telling them he had nothing more to live for and demanding the kid dare to pull the trigger. He then disclosed who he was and what his existing associates would do if they dare kill him or threaten the bus driver’s family again. I don’t know if the Yardies ever came back. When Deb and I split up it was rather sudden and I had nowhere else to go, so I lived above the Jolly Crocker for a whilst washing in cold water from a sink, sleeping on a mattress in a sleeping bag next to a gas fire; the only working appliance left up there. One of the other bar staff let me stay at his once as well, it was about twenty minutes walk or so across some very main roads and roundabouts to a very ropey area. He told me how he and his flatmate had been burgled at knife point the week before, they were both hilarious character, but they hadn’t even got round to having the front door fixed they were still so deeply infected by student mentality. The next morning I walked out of the place to find that the whole street had been cordoned off. I later discovered that a Somali gang had gone through the street smashing up kebab house shop fronts and attacking staff with Machetes, this had included the place directly underneath us and I understand that there had been a fatality. Manchester, in the middle of his exams, good old Gus, only in his very early twenties pulled up to the Jolly Crocker in his 1.1 beefed up white Nova, totally un-phased by London. We loaded the car and set off to Chesham where by the mercy of God I had finally managed to land a training contract. The boss had even cleared it for us to sleep on the office floor that night and then go and find somewhere for me to live the next day. It was the next day that we rang round the various adverts in the back of a Buckinghamshire paper from the front seats of a very laden Nova and eventually spoke to Yan. I moved into 112 Chapel Lane later that day. I walked past the Jolly Crocker a few years later. The rumours had always been that it was going to be closed and turned into a Thai Restaurant, which would have been criminal, or at the very least in breach of some planning law. Anyway, maybe that was the case because it just lay there locked up and lifeless, empty with shutters on the doors where the plants used to cascade. I was privileged to have known and been part of that place while it was still alive, indeed grateful that she had waited just long enough for me, a part of history now, mine, London’s, and all the folk who frequented her, unless of course any of they may be history too, in which case, I salute you.