Stories from Australia in the 1980's

Clive the bar manager and the not so Happy Hour

The following story is an excerpt from the coming novel Soundtrack Of My Life Volume 2 : Rivers and Roads

Due to its proximity to our neighbourhood, for the most part of the 1980’s, The Floreat Hotel was our local watering hole and my friends and I frequented the pub on a regular basis. If there wasn’t one of the many pub bands we saw regularly during that period performing at “The Flots” that night, we would tend to just hang out in the public bar or on the small concrete terrace outside. In those days, The Floreat was a rather simple bar with no delusions of grandeur. The beers were predominantly West Australian, limited in variety, ( namely Swan Draught, Swan Gold and the popular Emu Export) and cheap. It was a simple, comfortable, easy going place, where you didn’t dress up, and the accepted fashion of the regular clients, was nothing more than t-shirts, shorts and very basic rubber sandals or “Thongs” as they are affectionately called in Australia.

The Floreat was exactly what it said it was on the tin.

A local Aussie pub.

As such, The Floreat was the ideal place to either start the night or to make a night of it there. That pub became an important meeting place for many of my friends who lived in the local area, so much so, we literally took over the bar. This led to a certain bravado and a sense of The Floreat being ‘our pub.’

As a consequence, we flouted the rules somewhat and pushed the establishment constantly for free drinks, discounts and to keep the bar open a little longer than was legally allowed at the time.

The bar manager, an over weight, balding, middle aged man, by the name of Clive, was someone who had very obviously had a gutful of working in bars, and as a result, his management of the place was extremely detached, disinterested and disorganised.

So he often simply gave in to our demands.

One night, there was a heavily discounted drink offer at the pub, a “Happy Hour,” which was supposed to run from 7pm until 8pm. The bar was exceedingly busy and since they were woefully understaffed, Clive was forced to jump behind the bar to lend a hand to his overwhelmed bar staff.

The service was extremely slow as they struggled to keep up with the excessive demand.

One of my friends from Seaside Football Club, Ray King or “Kingy”, became rather frustrated while enduring a hellishly long wait to be served and looking up at the clock that hung on the wall next to where he was standing, realised with the time now being 7:50pm, Happy Hour was slipping away fast.

Kingy couldn’t have that.

So, quite randomly, he reached up and moved the minute hand back on the clock 30 minutes to 7:20pm.

About 20 minutes later, with the real time being 8:10 and Clive and his crew still furiously working away and selling drinks at Happy Hour prices, Kingy realised his gambit had worked. So he again moved the minute hand back on the clock, this time to 7.25pm.

10 minutes later he moved the clock back again this time to 7:30pm.

All the while, Clive and his staff were totally oblivious to what was going on. As they furiously worked away, trying to appease the excessively thirsty natives, serving drinks at Happy Hour prices, Kingy smiled with pride.

The hilarious thing was, on more than one occasion, we caught Clive, dripping in sweat, looking forlornly up at the clock on the wall next to Kingy and shaking his head in frustration at the fact Happy “Hour” seemed to be a damned eternity.

A purgatory.

It wasn’t until out of sheer desperation, Clive eventually asked a punter what the time was as he was starting to doubt that infernal clock on the wall, that Happy Hour finally came to an abrupt conclusion, almost two hours after it was meant to, with Clive, let’s just say…

..not so happy.

Kit Calder-White is the author of the Soundtrack Of My Life series. Volume one: First Love is available now on Amazon and from most online book retailers.