The Blue Ball Pub: How Somerset's 'Christmas in July' Made Every Night a Saturday

The Blue Ball, Somerset I was an employee and a customer at this pub as a teenager in the early 1990s. This was one of four or five pubs clustered around the high street in the town where I grew up in Somerset. We gravitated towards the Blue Ball as teenagers, not because they served underage drinkers. They didn’t. And we could only afford to drink lime and soda anyway. No, we loved this place because it had (drumroll) two bars. So we were not only cool enough to go down the pub (never “to the pub”, strictly “down the pub” or, better still, “down the Blue”), but we even had our own bar. Turn to the right and you walked into the bar for saddos and old people (anyone over 20). On the left was our bar: brighter, airier. Although “airier” was relative at this time in history. This was more than 10 years before the indoor smoking ban. So both bars featured a cheerful, unremarkable fug of Superkings (right) and Silk Cut (left). The two separate areas were rarely breached by the opposing sets of clientele. Although if you had a “serious” conversation to navigate (relationship break-up, friendship drama, episodes of parental opprobrium), it was understood that the proper place for a tête-à-tête was in the “elderly” area. These were conversations which would merit perhaps an entire pint of lime and soda. At first I worked halfway between the two bars in the back kitchen as a washer-upper, elbow deep in scalding water, earning money for driving lessons. There was an understanding that if I excelled in this work and proved myself to be trustworthy I might be allowed to try out at bar work once I turned 18 in early summer. (This was 1991.) Thus it came to pass that I began my rehearsals at saying: “Ice and a slice with that?” around the time of the pub’s biggest gamble: Christmas in July. Initially I was sceptical about this pet project of the landlord’s. It was clearly a brazen cash-grab designed to counterbalance the economic effects of customers in the bar to the left who only ordered drinks that cost 15p. Outside it was 20C and one of the driest summers on record. Inside, in the bar to the left, the Christmas decorations had come out of storage, crumpled gold streamers fluttering over the Big D peanuts. A box of party poppers sat next to the bottles of Taboo and Mirage. At the start of the first shift, the barman and I silently pulled our crackers and grimly donned paper hats as the opening beats of Live Aid’s Do They Know It’s Christmas? intoned over the sound system. And yet it worked a treat. That year had been a fallow year at nearby Glastonbury and there was a pent-up need for fun. The turn-to-the-left bar crowd was just sitting around bored waiting for their A-level results. Suddenly every night was Saturday night. Those legally able to do so immediately upgraded their lime and soda to snakebite and black. By the end of the month the paper hats were like gold dust. That summer taught me the value of life being what you make it. Build it and they will come. Joy is on tap – you just need to give people a reason.