A closed pub is a tragic, unhappy sight. The place as soon as was life, folks speaking and laughing, now there’s none. OK, dangerous stuff would have gone on too. I get that. Each pub has a drinker or two who wants the drink they’re holding greater than they need to. These locations are, in any case, potential vectors for dependence on a extremely addictive substance, with all of the distress that entails. However I feel – hope – that pubs do extra good than hurt, that they’re extra of a blessing than a curse.
Like most drinkers, I’m inclined to think about that many of the inhabitants drink about the identical as me, if no more, and in related locations. When the primary lockdown was introduced, together with, unthinkably, the closing of pubs, Boris Johnson mentioned he discovered it wrenching to be “taking away the traditional, inalienable proper of free-born folks of the UK to go to the pub”. I occurred to look at him make that speech on a TV in my native pub – it was my birthday. I’m certain I nodded in settlement, although even then I assumed it was a little bit of a stretch to make the fitting to go to the pub sound prefer it was enshrined in Magna Carta. And after I checked, I discovered that solely about half of adults frequently frequent pubs and bars. So not everybody, by a protracted shot, workouts their inalienable proper, though that leaves no small quantity who do.
The lights have been going out in pubs for whereas now. Return 40 years and there have been greater than 60,000 pubs within the UK. At the moment, unhappily for me, I knew of just one that might serve me. I wasn’t but 18, you see, and I couldn’t cross for 18 both. Now, being 57, I can typically get served however there are a minimum of 20,000 fewer pubs to select from. How’s my luck?
These are the pubs which have gone for ever, every of them important within the lives of numbers unknown. However one thing virtually as dangerous as closing closure is beginning to occur – pubs closing earlier than closing time, or not opening in any respect early within the week. Lockdown modified every little thing. Earlier than then, whereas most pubs couldn’t keep open after 11pm, there gave the impression to be an unwritten rule that neither had been they allowed to shut earlier than 11pm. Now they appear to really feel they will shut once they please, usually for the fully logical motive that there’s subsequent to nobody in there. But it surely sends a chill down my backbone, for it appears like the primary portent that the pub’s finish is nigh.
Whereas a darkish pub is at all times a depressing sight, in cities and cities there might be elsewhere to go. There might be a lightweight on someplace. In rural areas, the place this isn’t the case, a darkish pub feels a lot darker. Within the village the place I spend quite a lot of my time, between now and Christmas the pub stays closed for the primary half of the week. I don’t blame the owner; I do know the enterprise is getting more durable on a regular basis. But when this pub is closed, there’s no public place for folks to commune inside a minimum of 5 miles. Sure, there is likely to be folks assembly to do yoga, speak about books, play pickleball or no matter, and that’s nice. However there’s nowhere seen, nowhere anybody can wander into.
It’s not that I’m at all times on this pub, actually. However I’m happier when it’s open, whether or not I’m there or not. Even when I’m simply sitting quietly at residence, I’m comforted by the thought that simply across the nook there’s a public place with its lights and some folks sitting round chatting, or simply staring into area. It’s an indication of life.
