18/10/2026
Sharp afternoon sun pierces my retinas through the windshield of my rental Ford as I park around the back of the infamous Cust Pub. Stepping out onto the gravel and squinting at the bright light, I'm greeted at the door by Tommy Dick: a snowy-haired publican with a jovial smile stretched over an otherwise no-nonsense face.
Like any journalist having to work on a weekend, I am hungover; and Tommy seems to understand this on some base level as the first thing he offers me is a hair of the dog, adding that I look like "crap warmed over." I've no reason to argue, so I haul my portable reel-to-reel tape recorder and a notepad out of the Ford's boot and we head inside this local watering hole to take some of the sting out of the glaring sun.
Setting the heavy recorder down on the bar (all 21st century "jafa" technology must be left at the border when entering the Great State of Custland) I thank Tommy for my drink, sit down at one of the many empty stools and take some quick notes of the interior space from my seat.
Today being Sunday, not much life can be seen inside the pub famous for its rowdy Friday and Saturday night piss-ups. The Cust is also known for hosting massive weekly meat raffles offering up meaty prizes and live music every Wednesday evening that drags on into the wee hours of Thursday morning, but looking around here this afternoon, you wouldn't know it. Three old duffers sit nursing jugs of cloudy b**r in a dark corner muttering about lamb export prices, and a grumpy-looking thin woman with short brown hair and a creasing frown sits brooding in a sort of office nook beside the bar, beneath a fly-stained menu board that says (sic) "PUB GRUB WINDO." She stares at me suspiciously, retrieves a cigarette from an ashtray in front of her, and takes a long drag.
"That's me partner o'er there, Kris," Tommy explains. I don't know if he means 'partner' in a strictly business sense or also in a romantic way, and I don't intend to ask.
Three regulars and one other staff member on roster, quite a contrast to the thriving place it becomes mid-week when it features acts such as Canned Heat and Crowded House, The Fugs, and blues heavyweights the likes of Bo Diddley, Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf. It also showcases local talent such as Two Dogs and Ranchwagon Forde, the latter of whom works behind the bar on busy nights and is also the quasiliterate voice of "cust mgmt" running their social media account which this very interview will later be published on.
"Ah yes, we've been doin' the awl meat raffles for a good wee while now," Tommy says in his thick Scottish brogue, "at times they can get a little b***y, but most people keep their heads screwed on. Ya do get the odd silly bu**er though."
For a once-weekly, $3 a ticket show offering a once-in-a lifetime chance to see legendary acts like Blerta, Big Brother and the Holding Company, RAT DICKZ, The Cramps, Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs, Amyl and The Sniffers, David Bowie (performing under the alias "Ciggy Stardust"), Th' Dudes, Darcy Clay, The Kinks, Tina Turner, and perhaps most impressively, Elvis Presley (touring undercover through Cust as "Alvis Parsley"), Tommy and Kris have a pretty decent thing going for their community. The "Wensdy Nite Meat Raffel" as it is colloquially referred to on their posters occasionally also features up-and-coming local talent, giving young musicians the chance to rub shoulders with industry titans and even play alongside them. And you in the audience might go home with a meat pack. But all that excitement jammed into a relatively small rural pub has its drawbacks, as my host explains.
"Few years ago we had a semi-regular come in often, young fella by the name of Kenny O'Shea who used to go out with our Tina who worked behind the bar some nights." (Note: not to be confused with the delightful Tina Turner who performed at a Wednesday Night Meat Raffle not long ago.)
"A big fella Kenny was, thick as mud but strong as an ox. Loved his rugby too, used to get cross if someone o'er on the jukebox put a tune on and he couldn't hear the game playin' on the telly.
"One time, this would've been on a Thursday after we'd just had a big raffle with Shania Twain, Hogsnort Rupert, and the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band, an' the whole place was in a bit of a state. I had Ranchy and Krissy pushing a broom and mop around the floor while Tina (not the singer) was on b**r duty at the bar tending to any bleary-eyed hangers on, when in came Kenny, somehow stinking worse than anyone else in the room.
"Now, he'd already been asked to leave during the show the night before because he'd made a fool of himself asking the Bonzo Doo Dahs to play 'Freebird' and for making some inappropriate remarks to Miss Twain, so I wasn't too keen to see him there in the pub that morning. Right away he staggered up to the bar where his lady-friend Tina was working and told her he wanted a handle of Speights. Good girl that she was, she told him he'd been cut off. But he wouldn't listen, so I walked o'er and told him to bu**er off.
"Kenny wouldn't take no for an answer, and the gobs**te shoved me backwards. Well, that was his biggest mistake..."
Tommy looks up at the ceiling with a glint in his eye, grins, then lowers his face again and looks me dead in the eye.
I asked the pub boss what he did next. My reel of tape was almost at the end as well, so I had to try and hurry this interview along.
"I was in the Scots Navy for 20 years, where I learnt a close-combat fighting style called 'crouching haggis, hidden caber.' I swung my right hook into Kenny's cheek, then when he was stunned, I grabbed a pool cue off the table nearby and whacked him across the other side of his ugly face. It broke the stick, but that didn't matter, now I had a sharp pointed weapon to use if I needed it."
Just then, Kris aka "Krissy" joins us, feigning a weak smile and reeking of an ashtray. I raise my glass. "Tommy was just telling me about his fight with Kenny O'Shea a few years ago," I explain. Kris blinks in confusion and her mouth parts slightly, as if all her mental energy is being spent scrambling to find what words to reply with.
"Nevermind that," she elbows her partner in the side, "what about the time you got into a punch-up with Ike Turner!"
Tommy's face darkens, the universally recognisable look of a man who wishes the topic would change. "Aye."
Krissy pushes on. "It was about money, wasn't it? All because he thought you didn't pay him enough for that show he put on with Tina and the Ikettes. Him and his goons gave you and Ranchy a hiding alright."
"I dinnae wanna talk about that nae more," Tommy replies hastily.
I jump in and quickly shift the conversation back towards Tommy's scuffle with O'Shea, and Kris walks away to go collect "empty" jugs from the old duffers' table that still appear to have b**r left in them, blithely ignoring their protests about unfairness.
Kenny O'Shea, believed to be in his mid to late thirties with a heavy drinking problem, used to run with the notorious Harris Brothers during his teenage years and early twenties before getting out and attempting to "go straight." From trying his hand at the local freezing works to working in construction, most positions of employment are a fleeting affair for young Kenny as his violent tendencies always seem to come into play whenever he gets too comfortable in any one place.
"One time he and Tina went an' got hamburgers from a flash burger bar in Christchurch. This is a big deal in Cust, because most folks round here don't have the money to travel into the big smoke let alone drop a whole four dollars on hamburgers that come in a flash paper bag with tomato sauce included in them.
"I wouldn't let them bring their food inside because they didn't order it off our pub grub menu, so they decided they'd leave their grub outside on a stinkin' hot day, cooking on the dashboard of Kenny's ute. Whole time they were in here, it being Tina's day off, Mister Bigshot was drinkin' up a storm and braggin' about how he could afford to take his woman to a burger bar and blow a whole two dollars on getting her a hamburger with the works, beetroot, cheese, fried egg... we were all getting pretty fed up with him, to be honest. A whole lotta hubbub in the pub coming from just one bloke.
"Two old regulars, Dixon Croakley and Wayne Kerr waited 'til Kenny went to go relieve himself in the loos and they sneaked outside to see if they could jimmy open the door on his ute with a bit of wire and steal those hamburgers. Well they got out there and found Kenny was already outside, holding Tina against the door of his ute and thrusting in an' out of her. Kenny looked at 'em but didn't stop what he was doing. 'Hang onto that length of wire fellas,' he told them, 'might need it later on with Tina.' Old Croaky and Kerr just went back inside and finished their b**rs. Then a little bit later, Kenny swaggered back in with Tina all disheveled looking. When asked if he thought those burgers would still be alright to eat by the time they got home, he said 'both those burgers are going to be inside me, and I'm going to be inside Tina.'"
Tommy chuckles. "We're known for our hard-case characters around here, and Kenny is nae different. Quite frankly Dylan, I'm surprised we haven't immortalised him as a 'Person of Cust' yet. Part of me wants to see him back, the rest of me not so much. No one's seen hide nor hair of him in a while, though I heard he might be doin' time in Claxby or even in the Milton Hilton. I just hope wherever he is now, he's mellowed out and become a bit more sensible."
I thank Tommy and Kris for their hospitality and head back out into the still bright late afternoon sun, made all the more comfortable and tolerable with the glow of liquor in my veins. As I start the engine, I think about larrikins the likes of Kenny O'Shea and old stalwarts the likes of Tommy Dick. I think about myself, and how I have to return this rental Ford XB Fairmont to some chap named 'Dirty Des' at his aptly named 'Car Corral' before 7pm or else I'll have my legs broken by his 'Droog Boys' in the workshop. I think about the other hard-case characters of this bizarre and isolated part of the country, and wonder if we're not all 'People of Cust' at the end of the day. Or at least some of us, anyway.
By Dylan Taite for ๐๐ถ๐ด๐ฉ๐ณ๐ฐ๐ฐ๐ฎ Magazine.
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