Tuesday 4 January 2011

Your shout?

In the pub, at the bar, with a crowd? Then opt out of the round if you agree with Richard Thaler, government advisor from Chicago University — or at least set up a tab if there are more than three of you. Binge drinking can be knocked on the head, dealt a deadly blow, pierced through the heart and its vitals, he says here, if only Brits at the bar will stop buying rounds. I think they last tried this approach during the First World War, when it was called ‘treating’ (or was that just for soldiers?). It was part of the attempt to get munitions workers on the straight and narrow (along with the introduction of dear old DORA and various other things). Hey ho. Buying a round is part of the conviviality and sociability of the pub, one of the ways we express ourselves with friends and colleagues — and if you don’t want to be part of it you just say no, which is a fairly easy thing. No rounds were certainly being bought in a pub in a Devon village, on a day before Christmas, as I alone, at a table in a corner, contemplating a mid-afternoon Otter on the way home, saw a bloke who used to booze a lot around here. Never cared for him that much. Solitary at the bar, shoulders slumped over his glass of Smooth, the classic image of the drinking loser, he woke up and gained some composure when an acquaintance parked himself unsteadily onto the next stool. Words emerged and I tuned in and out, as you do, sometimes hearing whole sentences, other times just fragments — the music of pub life. The pub’s too expensive…you can get cans from the supermarket a quid each…sit home in front of the telly…as much as you like (no rounds then)…in the warmth…on your own. I heard riffs on this theme several times over Christmas (and even earlier this evening in the Co-op) so it’s full steam ahead for the good ship Titanic as some might want to call the pub industry, but on the other hand in the pub over the holiday I also witnessed and heard different things: a Smooth Tetley regular switching to Otter Amber and a chat with a local drinker in his mid-20s who said he was getting bored with his Carlsberg and switching over to cask beer more and more. You win some, you lose some, which is how I guess it’s always going to be. 

9 comments:

  1. By Jingo!

    You just wrote me into a cold sweat...

    The 'solitary at the bar' is a concept I have long feared. And I always will fear him, as long as he remains there, drooped, with the Smooth under his chin, propping up his dreams like a old, dry broom...

    Can't we just ban him?

    Surely anything can be outlawed.

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  2. Such intolerance. Who knows the whys and wherefores of the lone drinker? He may or may not be happy, but he deserves respect as a man who for whatever reason, does what he does; or has to.

    His dreams are just as valid as yours.

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  3. Hearty — tongue in cheek at the bar no doubt
    Tandleman — it’s hardly an assault on the universal rights of man, Hearty is I think being a sort of ale-like Cooking Lager, while I just observed.

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  4. Maybe as someone who has been known to drink on his own on occasion (and enjoy it, I felt a little over sensitive!

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  5. Nowt wrong with drinking on your own — you can get on with your newspaper/book/novel in peace, watch people, etc etc, I love the whole codified structure of one’s presence in the pub, a paper or book in hand with a determination to read says go away, while being held slightly airily could mean I might be up for a conversation if the company is right (ie not tight). Then there’s the body language — slumping over a drink at the bar is a Marshall amp turned to 10 — I’m a lush — while being asleep at the end of the bar (this is a regular occurrence amongst some of the types who tread their way through the doors of one of our town pubs) is pure Spinal Tap.

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  6. It's a shame. the practice of buying rounds is severely lacking in US bar culture. It also seems unlikely to me that social drinking is less responsible than solo-drinking. I think a look at people with drinking problems would reveal the opposite.

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  7. Flagon — I often think that if someone has a drinking problem it doesn’t matter where they do it when they start, whether it’s being part of rounds in the pub or a bottle of wine (or three) in the evening with friends, but it invariably ends up alone without any regard to connoisseurship

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  8. You hit the nail on the head with your last sentence there. Appreciation of the drink (and the social aspect of it) are wholesome and healthy, not insidious.

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  9. Flagon — connoisseurship is key to my enjoyment of all beer and pubs, whether it’s the company I keep or the beers in which I steep.

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