Chris Maclean: am I dispensable?

Fresh back from holidays I confess a little surprise that the building is still standing. Our brief week's holiday in northern France was a welcome break but having spend the past 11 months with a constant hand on the tiller I had probably worked myself into a mindset that this place couldn't survive without me. How wrong I was.

The staff did splendidly. Nothing at all seemed out of place. No broken light bulbs. No hideous heaps of mail; either postal or electronic. Everything had been sorted. Indeed, so tidy was everything that I started to interrogate individual staff members. "Are you sure nothing went wrong?" I asked them. Nope, nothing, they replied.

There had been a slight disaster in the cellar when a keg of lager had, inexplicably, decided to empty its whole contents onto the cellar ceiling. But the staff dealt with it as well, if not better, than I could and without the accompanying stress.

So have I overplayed my importance here? Have I just discovered I am not that essential to the running of the pub?

The fact is, having spent all the time until now firmly establishing the ground roots for the business and run it for long enough that all parties, both customers and staff, know what we are, my need to be here all the time is clearly not necessary.

But there in lies the risk. If my mantra is to be believed, that to run a good pub one must "keep good beer, keep the place clean and be there", am I risking the future solidity of the business if I take more time off?

I believe so. And that is the hardest part. It isn't absolutely necessary that I am here all the time but, if I am not always here, there is a risk this business will lose direction and start to founder.

I am going to have to learn to manage my time more carefully than I ever have had to do so before.

Interestingly my sister-in-law has kept her eye on things during our absence. All she has had to do is the banking and make sure the staff turned up. Well they all did when required.

So why is it my sister-in-law looks absolutely frazzled after one week? She's never been a licensee. Maybe it is harder work than I realise.

II feel another holiday coming on.