Across the Bar: The Great Union Inn

Across the Bar: Allie Machon At The Great Union Hotel
Jersey Topic, 1967

“Mind your own business," she said. Hardly the most encouraging way to start an interview i thought. And just to get the message through she said it again.

Then laughing, she added: “No, you don‘t understand. I'm not being rude or anything. But it‘s a form of greeting we have been using here for years.“

“Oh, that's different." I said and we settled down to business:

“There‘s not much to tell really. I just moved in here with the furniture and been here ever since," said the twinkling-eyed manageress of the Great Union Hotel, Mrs. Allie Machon.

It was 46 years ago when Allie left St. Paul‘s Girls‘ School to join her mother and uncle behind the bar at one of Jersey's few remaining free houses.

All this was very new to Allie and her mother, but uncle was experienced and full of ideas. His best came a few years later when his old friend Dick Turpin and the Chipmuckers - the dominoes team - decided to form the ‘Mind Your Own Business' Club.

The success of MYOB was even greater than their expectations and they never ceased to be amazed by the number of people who rushed to the Great Union just to be given a rude answer. But they all loved it and stayed.

Which is just what the club wanted. Funds grew and children were taken on several outings to picnics, pantomimes and sporting events every year. And in the evening their regulars would be taken on a grand pub tour.

“Oh, you’ve never seen anything like it,” says Allie, “And the initiation ceremony into MYOB was hilarious. Everyone would form a crocodile with the new member leading it. The room would be cleared and everyone would troop round singing, ‘I like to walk behind a man who smokes a big cigar.’ Nobody knew why we chanted this, it was just good fun."

"Perhaps a lot of people. especially outsiders, thought it was all very silly. But the work MYOB did for everyone was marvellous. And it’s very sad that interest in the club has now nearly all gone.

“But you can’t expect these things to last for ever." she said glancing at the rows of cups, trophies and shields that fill the public bar. “All these cups were part of the club once. We didn't play other pubs for them but kept them between ourselves.”

“We played darts, dominoes and cards against each other, and if you won a championship your name would be engraved on one of the trophies.”

When her uncle died she and her mother found themselves faced with the task of running the pub: “Mother stood no nonsense from the word go. She ran the place with an iron hand but soft heart and we had no trouble at all.”

“If there was even the slightest hint of trouble, she would open the door and say just one word -'out' - and they went.” Allie finally took over running the hotel by herself three years ago when her mother retired: “It was the obvious step and I don’t think I could have taken it if it meant just working on the bar. But luckily this is an hotel as well and I’ve really enjoyed myself looking after the visitors. But if I had my life to live all over again, I wouldn’t take on this work—you see I‘ve had no home life at all.”