Gin O’clock at Little Horwood
Gin in the garden at Little Horwood.
The Distance Project 10
It’s 5 pm, and the sun is shining. Chrissie Beckett, who doesn’t like to be photographed, (see last week) has put out chairs; it’s Saturday afternoon and it’s gin o’clock.
Women from the village walk into Chrissie’s front garden and sit down. They’ve brought their own drinks, but sometimes they can be tempted to try a different gin. Chrissie is out of shot to the right, in the first two photos.
Later on that day at the Shoulder of Mutton pub, the landlord Lewis Huntington is delivering meals that customers ordered earlier.
He’s been doing this for some weeks, and delivers beer too. The beer deliveries started when he was caught with lots of beer in the pub, at the start of lockdown.
Lewis took over the pub with his daughter Tia in February this year, and they haven’t yet opened it under normal conditions. But the pub is now opening, following government guidelines.
Details of opening times are here. They say that booking is highly recommended on Friday and Saturday evenings, or for larger groups.
In the project I'm photographing what people are doing differently under lockdown. With this post I've published 94 photos so far.
(Edited, September 2021)
This is just one of many posts from The Distance Project. That link will take you back to the very first posts, but if you want to see them in reverse order, just click on the link in the categories list that's on every page. The project ran from April 2020 to September 2021.
Young families come up so their smaller children can play in the garden. There’s a tent full of toys (which you can see in the previous shots) and an art easel. It’s one family at a time, and everything is cleaned carefully before the next family can come and play.
Just about out of shot, gin o’clock is still going on. But the sky is getting a bit dark.
There’s a sudden rain shower, quite heavy.
A few minutes later everyone else has gone; I’m out here on my own.
Lewis came back to the pub a minute ago. Now he’s bringing out orders for the next run.
Lewis loads up the car.
Less than five minutes after he arrived back at the pub, the car is reloaded and Lewis hurries round to the driver’s side of the car for the next run.
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