Gareth

Working in the Bricklayer's Arms in Shoreditch, around the time that Shoreditch was still a nice place, was a lot of fun. Dave the manager would give you cocktails and you could help yourself to beer, I liked the people that I worked with, it was an interesting bunch of people.

Emma started working there, she became a duty manager. She was slender, wore black usually, with her hair dyed black also, and was friendly and bright. One time she took a holiday back home in Sweden. I was working when she arrived back at Stansted and was confused as to where her boyfriend was since they planned that he would meet her there. I had to explain that he had gone into hiding.

Gareth was a painter. He painted in the style of Caravaggio he’d say and I suppose he did. He was, more or less, addicted to cocaine and would consume it habitually. He was very funny and very quick, perhaps a bit too quick. I’d often spend evenings with Howard and Gareth when Howard lived in Sandringham Road but it was quite tiring, I thought that Gareth turned everything into a competition of wit.

He was always hanging around the pub. He got some work decorating gold leaf behind the bar at the soon-to-open ‘Mother Bar’ above the 333 nightclub. He worked so slowly it became a joke. He worked for half an hour here, half an hour there, in the meantime drinking lots of free beer and nothing much was done. He had completed only a couple of metres after a couple of weeks and was sacked.

Well, it turned out that Gareth was stealing from the pub. He had found out the pub’s alarm code from Emma and, while she was on holiday, used it after the pub had closed.

Vicky, who owned the pub along with a few other locations, the Red Lion pub and the 333 nightclub, became aware that something was up so she had some thugs watch over the place and catch him in the act. For some reason or other Gareth had a hold over Vicky, he knew something about her business dealings that she didn’t want people to know and so he was beaten up and that was the end of it. He ran away.

Emma and he moved to Wales.