A very sad goodbye

This has taken me a while to write.  I wanted to get it just right and also I cried a lot whilst getting this one out.

Today we say the public goodbye to a place that we have fought hard to defend.  Today my good friends Cate and Aaron are holding a wake for their pub, at their pub.  You see unlike the movies where the little guys eventually win, The Castle Battersea closes its doors to the public for the last time on Saturday night/Sunday morning.  I am mourning for this place.  I guess I always thought that something would work out and that the pub and its landlords would get a reprieve.  That there would be an 11^th hour moment where it was all going to be ok.  Sadly this is not the case.

This place is much more than just bricks and mortar, it’s a home, a community, a meeting place and well one of my favourite places in the world.  I have told the story about walking into that place for the first time 100 times over.  The people in this pub made me feel me feel at home.  In this pub there are endless hugs, sing a longs, laughter and never ending fun.  And camaraderie, we have all sung ‘You better be home soon’ together countless times, we have celebrated Waitangi Day, ANZAC Day, Australia Day and pretty much any other day that is an excuse for a party together.  I have danced the night away to many a different act, I have sung my heart out and I have taken any excuse to party.  I have acted out the words to Torn and performed many other interpretative dances there.  I have found my London family among the walls of this pub, as well as many good friends, a chiropractor and a few crushes.  This pub has given me a London that is so important to me that I cannot comprehend a London without it.

We have been through a lot in this pub my London family and I.  Cate and Aaron put on a fundraiser for the Christchurch earthquake, and it was upstairs in their flat where Cate, Caz and I cried after seeing the news footage of this event.  The fundraiser was a mammoth event with live music, a kapahaka group and lots and lots of alcohol.  I have shaken the fund raising bucket there on more than one occasion and raised funds for everything from Christchurch to Breast Cancer.   I watched all of the Rugby World Cup 2011 NZ matches in this pub.  I wore black with pride and cried with joy and relief in their back garden in front of a big screen when we won.  It was a tense time with hugs and jumping up and down all around.

I have baked more than I care to think about for this pub.  I made a batch of biscuits one day for a birthday, and the rest is history.  They were so well loved that I got talked into making 400 more for the Homelands festival, they sold well and we ate way too many, but it was a fun time.  I have made endless cakes – my lemon drizzle cake has been renamed vajizzle cake due an unfortunate look.  I have baked birthday cakes and when one of my fav people had a leaving party I made coconut ice and ginger crunch, neither of which I particularly like but went down well.

The Royal Wedding was a surprise to us all, the pub ran out of food, certain beers and most disturbingly vodka.  I washed just about every glass they owned and was rewarded with love and  few free beers.  I love the feeling of we are all in this together that this pub and its staff have.  We all have each others backs and I know that if I am ever in need these guys will step up.

I have taken just about everyone I know in London to this oasis.  My parents visited there the day that they arrived in London.  Jetlagged and excited, they met my favourite Londoners over a few drinks, some live music and a banoffee pie that I had made.  It was a Sunday night and I was in for a long one, you see here we live the life of students.

The bar staff past and present have become my good friends.  I walk into the pub and am greeted with hugs and smiles.  We all go out together, we party together and we celebrate together.   I have laughed and laughed and laughed with these people.  They love me despite and because of my own version of crazy.  They think that I am hilarious.  And they love my smile.  In fact they love it that I am pretty much always smiling, Aaron told my parents on first meeting them that I was a keeper and that made me smile more. We are family and we are grieving for what we are about to lose.

So you might be thinking, why in the world is this heaven closing its doors.  Sadly, it’s not by choice.  A development company bought the land that this pub sits on and they would like to knock it down to build flats.  When they put in their planning application, we fought back with 750+ objections and they got the message loud and clear, Battersea wants its pub, not more flats.  The campaign was so successful, that the company decided that it would be in their interests to kick Cate and Aaron out before their lease was up and board up the pub rather than have people cling to what they love.  Oh and they told them on the first anniversary of the Christchurch earthquake.  Cheers guys you really know how to kick someone when they are down.  Recently the application was withdrawn due to there being a strong likelihood that it would be rejected.  Despite this Cate and Aaron still have to leave and our beloved pub will be boarded up and stand empty, whilst the company waits for the furore to die down. 

 

I know that this does not mean that we cannot go somewhere else and be the family that we have become.  I know that life goes on and that we are all so close that we will be together no matter what.  But this was our place, it has been a constant in my life when many other things were not.  The people will disperse somewhat, they will go to other pubs and we will not have this meeting place anymore.  I am sure that I have not done this place justice here, but you get the idea, I love it here.

So today, I will be dressed in my number one blacks (I have a veil!), and I will drink to a place that means the world to me.  I will party with the people who mean the world to me.  I am sure that there will be tears.  I know that there will be laughs, but most of all there will be us.