Welcome to our home.

For a bit of fun, we've told our story twice: once as Dick Francis might have written it, and once as Jilly Cooper might. Unlike the last lot, every word is true. (We checked. It was quite disappointing.)

 

 

Turn of the Spit (after Dick Francis)

 

I want to be clear from the start that nobody was murdered. I checked. In my experience a story like this needs a body in the cellar, and all we found in ours was a firkin of Langham Best Bitter and a mop that had seen things.

 

My wife Anna spent twenty-five years in Los Angeles dressing people for cameras. She can take in a room in a minute and tell you who's happy, who's pretending, and whose shirt doesn't fit. She once styled the Backstreet Boys. She would rather I hadn't mentioned it.

 

I spent the same years building bars and nightclubs: Tokyo, Manchester, the Hippodrome in London, Hollywood, Las Vegas. People assume this was glamorous. It was mostly drains.

 

We met in a pub I'd built in Echo Park. In 2016 we eloped to Las Vegas. It was the most decisive thing either of us has ever done, and we've been coasting on it since.

 

In December 2023 we took on the Hollist Arms in Lodsworth, between Petworth and Midhurst in the South Downs. The pub had been dark for a while. I investigated, as a man in my position does. It has been selling beer since at least the 1600s, under a string of names: Mants, the Crown, the Poyntz Arms. It became the Hollist Arms in the 1800s, after the Hollists, a real Lodsworth family, bought the land. From 1820 to 1945 one family ran it, the Gills, for a hundred and twenty-five years; for a good while the landlord was also the village blacksmith, with his forge next door. The last of them was Mrs Ida Gill, who kept it going on her own at the end. I respected her immediately. I have run a kitchen on a Sunday with one pot wash short, and I know what alone means.

 

The division of labour is simple. Anna runs the room, which requires charm, memory and patience. I run the kitchen, which requires shouting quietly at a rotisserie.

 

The kitchen opens at six. I read every ticket. Chefs collect burns the way jockeys collect fractures. Unlike jockeys, we get no sympathy, because people assume we did it on purpose.

 

The suppliers are close, partly on principle and partly because I can't be trusted with long journeys. The meat comes from Michael Courtney, the butcher in Midhurst, and the beef from Orchard Park Farm in Lurgashall, near enough that the cattle could probably walk here. We've asked them not to. The potatoes come from Buddington Farm at Easebourne. The bread comes from SØDT in Petworth, which is pronounced soot; I learned that in front of the baker. The beer comes from Langham Brewery, half a mile down the lane. If the beer's off, they'll hear about it before I do.

 

Our Pomeranian, Foxy, is the fox on the pub crest. Fame has not changed her. She was already like this.

 

In May the food hygiene inspector came. We have held five stars for three years. I expected five again and got five. I then sat in the walk-in for ten minutes, for reasons I prefer not to examine.

 

On race days the lanes from Goodwood fill with people who've won a little or lost a little. Both kinds want chips. When the polo's on at Cowdray, someone always asks whether we're "polo people". Anna says we're "shirt people", which is true.

 

There is no mystery here, which professionally I find disappointing. Just a pub at the end of The Street, a fire, a rotisserie turning, and two people who came a long way to discover they're quite good at pouring pints and quite bad at reversing.

 

Every word of this is true. We checked. That was the disappointing part too.

 

 

Last Orders in Lodsworth (after Jilly Cooper)

 

Lodsworth had braced itself. Word had gone round that the new people at the Hollist Arms were "from Hollywood", and the village prepared for veneers, a juice bar and a menu with the word "curated" on it.

 

What actually arrived, in December 2023, was a couple in their fifties with a Pomeranian, a van full of mismatched chairs and no idea how to reverse down The Street. There was considerable relief.

 

It was true that Anna Moore had spent twenty-five years in Los Angeles as a stylist. If cornered, she will admit to dressing the Backstreet Boys, but she will only talk about the trousers, and only briefly. She has also wrestled the chefs of Hell's Kitchen into their whites, a job she describes as "mostly safety pins and apologising".

 

Her husband Paul had spent the same years building nightclubs and restaurants from Tokyo to Las Vegas. That sounds terribly impressive until he explains that it mostly meant standing in empty rooms at 4am, worrying about the loos.

 

They met in a bar he'd built in Echo Park. In 2016 they eloped to Las Vegas, mainly because neither of them could face organising a wedding. They then organised a party anyway, which rather defeated the object.

 

Lodsworth sits in a fold of the South Downs between Petworth and Midhurst. It is achingly pretty and does not need two Americanised Brits telling it so. Across the valley the polo ponies thunder at Cowdray. In summer Goodwood glitters on the horizon, and the lanes fill with Range Rovers whose drivers believe, sincerely, that the hedge will move.

 

Anna set about the pub with candles, cushions and the quiet menace of a woman who has steamed a pop star's jacket in a moving car. She pours Langham Best Bitter, brewed half a mile down the lane. She remembers everybody's name, which is more than Paul can manage, and everybody's dog's name, which is more than Paul can manage with his own.

 

Paul lives in the kitchen and is seen only through the hatch, frowning at tickets like a man doing his tax return.

 

The rotisserie turns from the afternoon. Michael Courtney sends the meat from Midhurst, Orchard Park Farm sends the beef from Lurgashall, and Buddington Farm sends the potatoes from Easebourne. The sourdough comes from SØDT in Petworth, which is pronounced soot. Paul got this wrong in front of the baker, and has never fully recovered.

 

There is merchandise, made from vintage Polo Ralph Lauren shirts because Cowdray is up the road, and Anna cannot see a second-hand shirt without improving it. They sell, to Paul's ongoing astonishment.

 

The fox on the crest is Foxy, a Pomeranian with the confidence of a much larger dog and the social calendar of a much richer one. Dogs are welcome on a lead. Husbands, Anna notes, are tolerated.

 

On Thursdays the regulars come in at half past five for a pint or two. Several have switched to zero-alcohol beer for their health, and remind everyone of this constantly. On Sundays the roasts come out on platters for the table to fight over.

 

Lodsworth's verdict, delivered over the bar after about six months, was that they were "all right really". In the South Downs, that is practically a knighthood.