Remembering Good Friday ...

The decision to end Good Friday pub closing from next year reminds me of a piece of memoir I wrote last year on what Good Friday meant in The Hideout, writes Brian Byrne.

It was a day when a lot of very dirty work would be done behind closed doors, and as befitted the Easter theme, would mean the following day a resurrection of renewed paintwork, fittings, and sometimes even core structure.

The picture above is a rare and rough one of the timbered frontage of the Hideout in the early 1980s, in the online collection of a photographer named ‘thomashu’ whose actual identity I can’t find.

And the other illustration is of the deconstruction of the timber theme in summer of 1999, by new owner Tom Rafter, ending a unique pub style which had been begun by my father in 1950.

The Good Friday piece might bring back memories to some people still around with whom I would have shared work on that day, before I moved on from the business in 1977.