Charlie

We first moved into the Mulberry Co-op back in March of 1988. The houses had only just been finished and I decided we should move in straight away because there were fears of squatters.  

Over the years I’ve lived here, there are so many stories I could tell you, but one sticks out. The story itself comes at the end of quite a memorable week.  

It started with my daughter’s wedding, Saturday 3 September 1994. During the middle of the week, builders started to rip up the road outside our house to replace the pavements and path.  

I couldn’t believe it; it would mean getting the wedding car outside the house would be difficult and my daughter would have to walk for hundreds of meters along dusty, uneven pavements in her wedding dress.  

Luckily, our neighbours came to our rescue, and we worked together to put boards out across the road and pavement so she could safely and cleanly cross the road on the day. 

It was my job to bring the cake from the house to the reception. I was being so careful. I had a three-tiered cake in the back and was trying not to topple this or pop any balloons, especially on our uneven road. 

However, I didn’t need to worry about the cake. My wife’s uncle made the icing and at the reception they went to cut the cake and broke the knife. Then the second knife. Funnily enough, he never turned up at the wedding, he had forgotten to add ingredients to the icing, so it had hardened like cement. 

The next day, Sunday, we still had most of a keg of Fosters left from the reception. We invited our neighbours round to share it. We had pints and jugs of beer, and I then had to take the empty keg back to the brewery.  

Monday 5 September 1994, I was returning the keg, and I could hear a big dog running out the back in the main Mulberry Garden. No dogs are allowed in our central garden.  

Well, the Mulberry pub was preparing to open that week, their back door was open, and it appeared it was their dog which was running riot. 

I walked through the bar and spoke to the manager, who told me he owned the dog, and I then explained to him that dogs weren’t allowed out in the central garden, for safety and cleanliness reasons. 

He just shrugged me off saying he doesn’t have time for talking about the dog and told me to get lost. 

I didn’t argue, I was going to go to Coin Street, to ask for help to control this dog. As I left to head up to Coin Street, who was walking along? Iain Tuckett. 

So, I told him the situation and Iain came to help me. He walked into the pub and introduced himself, but the manager gave the same answer, this time raising his voice to say that he didn’t have time to talk to us or to bring his dog inside.  

Hearing this, Iain calmly pulled out his phone, hit a few buttons and started speaking. A few moments later, he told the man behind the bar that someone important was on the line and wanted to speak to him. 

He took Iain’s phone, put it up to his ear and instantly went white. Within a few seconds the manager shot outside from behind the bar, went into the central garden and retrieved the dog. He looked terrified. 

Iain had called the chairman of Young’s Brewery, owners of the pub. The man behind the bar must’ve been thinking ‘how does he know the chairman’s number’. It was brilliant. It was a fantastic day. 

Iain really came to our rescue, it was hilarious.  

That’s a little story about the opening of the Mulberry pub, which has now been here for 30 years in September.