From grotty London pub to Aberdeen hotel, bar work helps this newcomer learn to feel at home again

Ipulled my first pint at 15, in a small and dirty pub near Liverpool Street Station in London. I had recently arrived from South Africa and was staying with a friend.

I didn’t know anyone and, having never been away from home, the world seemed dangerously alluring. I walked the streets and sat on the Tube for hours, listening to fascinating snippets of conversation which, for a small town girl from the hinterlands of Africa, was a tonic that left me with a deep yearning for more.

The pub was a short walk from the grotty East End flat I shared with a handful of others. I marched through the bar’s doors with all the bravado of an invincible teenager, asking politely if they’d give me a job.

The couple who ran the pub were fairly grotty themselves; they never asked for ID, nor questioned my age and paid only in cash, below minimum wage. I didn’t care. I had a job where I could observe real life in a proper city.

I learned more about people and the world in the time I worked there than I had in my previous 14 years on Earth. Nourished by this experience, my loneliness and fear ebbed away.

Twenty-three years on and I’m still pulling pints.

Eleven months ago, when my husband and I – with our children, chickens and dog – made the move north from London to Aberdeen, I felt like that 15-year-old girl all over again. I knew no one in Aberdeen and the city seemed grey and foreboding.

I endlessly questioned whether we’d done the right thing, feeling lured into the murky pool of adult loneliness.

My work kept me indoors, writing and painting, alone in the gloom of that long first winter.

However, on one of my walks, I ended up in the hotel at the top of our road, asking if they’d give me a job.

I explained that I could only work a couple of evenings a week. They were surprisingly accommodating and I found myself, once more, behind the bar, listening to snippets of conversation and gaining access to the lives of young people, with their hopes, dreams and invincible bravado.

People began to call me by my name, then invite me to dinner. Occasionally, someone would wave to me on the street because they recognised me from the bar.

These were the things I’d missed, the things which made living here feel a little more like home.

Regardless of whatever else I achieve in my life, I imagine I’ll be pulling pints well into my twilight years.