The Lilley Arms

I keep my horse in the village of Lilley. It has added a whole other dimension to my life spending time over a period of 20 plus years in a village. I especially love the pub the Lilley Arms. A* got her first job there. I have worked there.

It’s not the prettiest pub in the world and the food is not the best, although it is perfectly adequate, but it is single female friendly (probably more by default than intention) and has a broad range of ‘regulars’, interesting paying guests (who are often connected to the airport or large local building contracts and keen for a chat), visiting dogs and plentiful character.

I have had some lovely times there and am very fond of a lot of people who go in although I doubt they realise this. We have two former stars of ‘come dine with me’. While it is hardly culturally diverse in comparison with Luton it is a wide mix of rich and not so rich, old, middle aged and young and probably an above average number of people who are Opinionated.

The landlady Sylvia is capable of doling out grief and gets moaned about in return for being cross and unfriendly. She has form. I have smarted from the edge of her withering tongue, but, rather like my face, she looks meaner than she is, where age, failing health and tiredness have wrought lines Botox has never got a sniff at.

What I admire about Sylvia is that the woman is a community lynchpin. Throughout the years that I have known her she has nurtured innumerable, often vulnerable young people in her kitchen and bar and offered employment to a number of older people down on their luck, acted as guarantor to get accommodation etc. When A*’s dad left, she was the person she turned to for comfort and support. Sylvia is a feet on the ground angel.

Without portraying it as a Last Resort for rejected no hopers because it isn’t, the pub personifies what it is to run a business that looks outwards, engages with its community and provides a forum which is its heart.