What could be better than working at the Friendship Inn with my best friend, Ned? Almost anything else, as it turned out

I adored pubs. They were my natural home. And now, thanks to my best friend, Ned, I’d got a job at the Friendship Inn in Prestwich. It was the mid-1980s, and I was in my early 20s, preparing for the first shift. What could be better than working in a pub called the Friendship alongside my bezzy? And I understood drink – you left Guinness to stand, aimed for half an inch of head on a pint of bitter, and if someone asked for water with a whisky you didn’t fill the glass. Easy-peasy.

As soon as I got behind the bar I panicked. There were perhaps half a dozen people waiting to order, but it looked like a sea of thousands. The bar was particularly tricky because it was shaped like the bow of a ship. Every time I went to one side, customers started calling from the other. I couldn’t remember the faces. Nor the drinks they ordered. I took a funny turn. The faces became twisted, distorted, ghoulish, cackling manically or cursing my incompetence. I felt like Mia Farrow confronting the neighbours’ coven in Rosemary’s Baby, only thankfully I didn’t have a knife.

I poured Guinness for people who had ordered a glass of red, Budweiser for those who wanted a Boddingtons. There wasn’t a thing I didn’t get wrong. And then I broke my first glass. The crowd staring at me got more Rosemary’s Baby by the second. My bitter was headless; my lager all head. I broke another glass. I was getting dizzy, struggling to breathe. My legs were collapsing.