For context, by the time you read this, we’ll have been closed almost two months due to a fire in our building (not in our bar). We now await the results of the investigations into the damages – and I suppose the fate of our future. It already feels like it’s been forever. 

It’s the small things I missed most: the brief silence in the morning when I’m the first to arrive; the moment I zip up my uniform before doing the briefing; the flow state of the first double stir of the night; and the way each one of us has a different way of calling out ‘backs’, ‘behind’ or ‘corner’. 

In some ways, I feel like I’ve never been this lonely in my life; I wake up feeling empty, and I go to bed feeling empty. I’m not sure it will ever be possible to explain to someone who’s not owned or operated a venue how a bar can become your home. 

To me, every day we are open, I share my home with strangers. For a few hours every night, they take over completely and I get to jump in and out of hundreds of conversations, making small connections with people I never met before. My home being theirs as much as mine. 

This has always been one of my favourite parts of having a bar, because it has made my life rich in a way I could never dream of, by introducing me to so many beautiful people with whom my path would most likely have never crossed, had it not been for the bar. 

Over time, many of those strangers have become family – and now when I don’t see them, I miss them. The conversations, the updates, the moment you look up and recognise their faces as they walk into the bar. 

Relationships with regulars 

I remember having this conversation with Alex during Covid, when we would wonder how our regulars were doing, if their lives had moved on, and if we would see them again when the bar eventually reopened. Sometimes we would worry about them – we still do – if we didn’t see them in a while, and equally when we do see someone after a long time, the happiness that comes with that is hard to beat. 

No one prepares you for how much you will care about your regulars, or how much joy they will give you, how much you will miss them when you don’t see them or how important they will be to your life. All you are taught in your younger years is the importance of “professional distance”, but in reality, I see some of my regulars more than my family. I’m closer with them than many of my friends – and I enjoy their company enough to give them carte blanche over my home. 

In the past, I often felt guilty for choosing work over what people call a “private life”. But sitting here now, without the bar, I realise I’ve been looking at it the wrong way. I am one of the fortunate people whose work and life became inseparable. 

Some people spend their whole lives searching for something that gives them purpose. I found mine in my bar. And now that it’s gone – if only temporarily – I understand something I never fully appreciated before: how much of myself lives within those four walls. I can’t wait to have my bar back.   

The pop-up, Casual by Tayer, is now open in the basement of Cato