Particularly galling, for Simon, is the fact hospitality has been treated differently to retail, including non-essential shops. Nonetheless, this year's challenges have tested him to the limit. Simon has also fought back from a brain haemorrhage to turn the Firbank into an award-winning pub which employs local people.
And, in the months that followed, the pub was firebombed on three occasions, on the first of which Simon and his wife had to flee the pub in the early hours.Ī drug dealer then demanded £5,000 from Simon to 'make it stop', before ending up being prosecuted for blackmail. In 2015 a gunman fired at the window of an empty pool room. Over the last five years, Simon, who drank his first ever pint in the Firbank and grew up locally, has repeatedly beaten the odds to keep the pub open. "When we went into this second lockdown we thought it's okay it will only be a couple of weeks, but then we have come out and we are still in lockdown here."
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