60 years pulling pints... but I don’t even drink!
HAVING pulled pints for 60 years, you might imagine that Nelly Kempsell is fond of a tipple herself.
But the 77-year-old barmaid hates drinking – and has been teetotal for five decades.
Mrs Kempsell got her first job as a barmaid aged 18 but swore off alcohol when her family came along.
She said: ‘I haven’t had a drink since I was 30. When my husband and I would take the kids out I would let him have a drink. I don’t like it, I never really enjoyed it.’
Mrs Kempsell has worked in the Globe Inn, Dumfries, for the past 24 years, and has served in several of the town’s pubs in her time.
‘I love my job because of the company it gives me and the banter I have with the boys,’ she said.
Before the Globe Inn, Mrs Kempsell was pulling pints in her own pub, Ye Olde Friars Vaults, which she and her late husband, Alfie, bought in 1975.
The pair met when Mrs Kempsell was a teenager working at The Imperial pub as a bookkeeper. They married and had children Gail, 55, Gary, 52, and 47-year-old Dawn. But in 1984, after running their own place for nine years, Mr Kempsell died, aged only 48.
Mrs Kempsell said: ‘I ran the pub for seven years after Alfie died, but it became too much for me.
‘But I got fed up not doing anything so I went for an interview at the Globe on a Friday and the boss asked me to start on the Monday.’
Now she can’t imagine her life without the pub and has no plans to give up her job as a barmaid any time soon. She said: ‘I want to keep it going for as long as I can.’