A New Life: Anne Scanlon tells Claire O'Connell she likes the sociability of working in the family pub.
Sometimes there's no getting away from tradition. For Anne Scanlon, the family pub has always been a touchstone and now it forms the foundation for a new phase in her life.
She recently called time on her career as a registered nurse for people with intellectual disabilities in order to provide healthy, home-cooked food through the pub.
Born Anne Kavanagh, she is part of the seventh generation to run Dublin's oldest family pub, known commonly as the Gravedigger's.
She and her five siblings are steeped in the family business, and Anne has worked there on and off since she was 10. That's when they moved into the house above the pub next to Glasnevin Cemetery on Dublin's north side.
"I remember moving from Finglas to the pub. It was a huge change because I left all my friends behind, so it meant starting afresh really," she says. "I found it very hard to settle into Glasnevin."
Part of that involved renovating the dilapidated living quarters, which she recalls were in a dire state, and extending the licensed premises downstairs to include a lounge. Everyone in the family was drafted in to help run the business, collecting glasses or working behind the bar, as age allowed.
Through her teens she built up friendships within the local community and with the other lounge kids who worked in the pub including her now-husband, who she met when she was 16.
She trained as a registered nurse for people with intellectual disabilities and took a staff post at St Raphael's in Celbridge, Co Kildare, a residential home for people with learning disabilities. But as her own family grew, she found the institutional hours didn't suit life with children and she tapered her shifts, eventually leaving her post to become, for the most part, a stay-at-home mother.
All the while the lure of working in the pub persisted and she kept her hand in pulling pints a couple of nights a week for several years until her children were all at school.
Then the nursing vocation called again. "I wanted a bit of a change," she says. "But I also wanted to work hours that would suit my children, and the only hours I could work were in the morning."
She took a part-time teaching post at a training centre connected with St Raphael's and helped clients with intellectual disabilities integrate into the wider community. "I used to teach them how to look after themselves independently," she says. "It was nice and it was a change for me, and at the same time I knew a lot of the clients because they had been in residential care."
Meanwhile, the prospect of expanding the pub's business cropped up. "My brother Ciarán was thinking of coming back from Italy where he was working as a chef.
He wanted to come home to set up a restaurant and we just got talking about it. I thought I'd be interested in doing something like that - something different," she says.
The siblings drew up plans to revamp the lounge and start serving lunches to test the waters, but Scanlon says it was all casual. "It was nothing major, a few ideas over dinner," she says.
Then the job situation at the training centre changed, making it less compatible with family life.
Scanlon says this was the impetus she needed to leave her teaching post and push the new ideas about food at the pub. "When the change in work happened I said this is my chance to get up and do it," she says. "I said to my brother that I could make a commitment here, and that I could do the pub food in the mornings with him. And that's how it happened."
Today, they run a thriving lunch service in the lounge: Ciarán prepares the food, while Scanlon waitresses and manages the other staff.
"It's a small menu but it changes all the time," she says. "We just want to put something wholesome and healthy out there for people in the area."
On a typical day, she organises the kids for school in Lucan, then comes into the pub and sets up for lunch. "Having been a staff nurse helps because there are a lot of managerial things going on that I didn't think I would have to do - I have to organise who is doing what, keep the place clean and make sure there's general hygiene," she says.
From her upbringing, it's not surprising that she finds the sociable aspect of her work enjoyable. "I love being with people," she says. "I love talking to people and the whole social thing, especially when the neighbours come in and have their food and we can reminisce."
And when lunch wraps up, she goes home and slots into "the usual things that mothers do".
As she dashes off to prepare for another day's custom, she has no doubt that she made a good choice. "Absolutely, I am enjoying it. It's keeping me very busy and that's what I need," she says.
Meanwhile, the enthusiasm for the family business is spilling over into the next generation: Scanlon's eldest son is now a lounge kid at the pub. Sometimes there's no getting away from tradition.