My Father's Pubs - 1

That my father found so much pleasure in a good English pub may, at least in part, be due to this pub, the Ship Inn in Caister, the small Norfolk town from which his branch of the Hayletts came.

His father, against family tradition, had gone 'deep sea' rather than join a local fishing industry which, after the loss of the herring, was in severe decline, yet he found his wife in this pub, for Edith, my grandmother, worked there. And it was to Caister and this pub that my father returned on the leaves - holidays - he had while working for forty years on the east coast of Africa.

Pubs didn't exist in East Africa, so my first memories of my father's enjoyment of good company was at the Mombasa Sports Club. He didn't just relax there: he was one of the club's cricket umpires, and used to challenge my brother and I to explain the leg-before-wicket rules.

While my father drank with his friends in the bar, my mother, Richard and I would enjoy a drink and the club's chipped potatoes under the mango trees that shaded the outfield.

My first memory of my father in an English pub was soon after my parents retired from East Africa, when they rented a cottage in the Kent village of Appledore. While he did like the Red Lion in the village, he preferred The Ferry Inn at Stone on the Isle of Oxney, a short drive from Appledore. He was so favoured by the publican, George, that he was often to be found in the bar long after closing time in the afternoon.

They bought their first retirement house in the village of Three Oaks, just outside Hastings. Its only services were a small 'halt' on the Hastings to Ashford railway - a 'halt' being a station where one held out one's hand if one wanted the train to stop - and the Three Oaks Hotel where my father spent about two hours at lunchtime every weekday. While he amused himself thus, my mother used the railway to commute up to London on three days of the weeks to work for an association which represented Conservative peers.

My father did, occasally, take a break from the hotel, driving to this pub, the White Hart, on the Hastings to Rye main road. The bitter (beer) there didn't suit him, so he often drank bottled Guiness instead. When we first went to the pub - by this time I was old enough legally to enjoy a pint with him - it was very run down, the main area in the pub being split into three rooms, the saloon bar being the place the women drank and the public bar where workmen drank. However, a revolution followed when it was taken over by a young couple, the Richardsons, who knocked through the interior walls to make a large bar area, and who developed the pub by, for example, creating a lovely pub garden at the rear of the premises where guests' children could play.