Chris Maclean: Negative associations are criminal

Having driven several hundred miles delivering and collecting furniture I have just returned the hire-van to the yard in Canterbury. A swift pint in a nearby pub and then I jump onto the train home, exhausted but content with a good day's work.

I got a good seat for the short journey but unfortunately I am spotted by an occasional customer who is getting on with his bicycle.

Please understand. I am tired and I've not eaten for hours. My strategy will be simple. I will shut my eyes and feign sleep. That should deter any interruptions.

Once the chap had stowed his bike he looked around and saw me. He came and sat opposite.

"Hello, mate, how's it going?"

I "awoke" and answered politely but mono-syllabically. I wasn't rude but I wanted my space. He probed and questioned. It was irritating but harmless.

But then he delivered a question that got right under my skin.

"Did the bloke who smashed the window at Davis & Easton's come into your pub?"

Forgive me but this question I found extraordinary. Let me explain.

Davis & Easton's is a small, independent electrical goods retailer about 150 yards from here. On Saturday night some scally-wag broke the window. It happens here in Faversham. It happens in many towns. Windows get broken. But it is the chain of connections the man on the train has made that leave me speechless. He hadn't witnessed the crime but his thought process had led him to think that the person responsible had visited here.

Let me put it another way.

The villain of the piece; the window-breaker, according to those who know, smashed the window in an angry moment. My man on the train has now presumed he might have come in my direction. There's a 50% chance he was right. It was either this way ~ or the other.

Now it gets interesting. My man on the train has concluded that the villain, having achieved his desired result, might then adjourn to a nearby hostelry. Of those in the vincinity he has determined that mine might be a logical choice.

That, upon the villain's arrival either he demonstrates by his agitated behaviour or the physical symptoms like cut knuckles and bleeding wounds that he has recently been involved in a criminal act, or that, having had a pint of beer, he can no longer contain himself and makes a complete bar-counter confession to the bar-maid. Either way the villain is identified in my pub and the judicial process can be pursued.

Poppycock. Rubbish.

There is no evidence of the villain being drunk, taken alcohol, drugs or anything else. There is no evidence he went to a pub before, or after the event.

The suggestion that my pub should be a natural and automatic choice for such activity is beyond comprehension.

What is so offensive is that a casual customer can suggest in this manner that a pub is either the source, or the refuge, of those who behave in this way.

Years ago when car radios were the target for many petty-criminals it was generally considered that all the criminals were then touting their wares around pubs. Not so. I have never seen anyone in any pub I've worked in, or even visited, approach me with suspicious goods ~ save for a man who tried to flog pirate DVD's in here a couple of years ago. He was given short shrift.

It is vital that pubs demonstrate their positive credentials as a force for good in their communities ~ not a refuge for criminals and undesirables. The sooner people stop associating, automatically, that pubs and crime are linked, the sooner we can recover the lost ground we innkeepers are responsible for.