Adam Boulton Diary: I don’t like pubs

“Grab a drink, raise a glass, pubs are reopening” came the rather unusual Tweet from Her Majesty’s usually dour Treasury, earlier this week. But these are straightened times and the nation’s coffers are empty; every penny of excise duty helps.

But not for the first time during this pandemic, and before the very first pint is pulled, the government is muddle-headed.

At first, Boris Johnson presented the easing of the lockdown on Saturday July 4 (US Independence Day) as an act of generosity by a benevolent leader. The Prime Minister is restoring what he – and his fun-loving father Stanley – regard as “the ancient, inalienable, right of free-born people of the United Kingdom to go to the pub.”

But after hundreds of thousands flocked to sunny beauty spots as soon as permission was granted, belated awareness dawned that “Super Saturday” could turn into a supercharged spreader of coronavirus. The Prime Minister rushed to stress the reverse side of permissiveness: “Don’t overdo it.”

His appeal may not be necessary. According to the pollster IpsosMORI, 61% of us feel “very uncomfortable or not at all comfortable” about returning to pubs. About the same majority are now reluctant to use public lavatories, public transport or to visit the cinema or theatre, for fear of contagion.

For many, it will be stay at home Saturday. I’ll be joining them. The health fears are obvious, but the truth is I belong to the growing number of people who don’t like pubs much anyway. Smelly, crowded, noisy, ugly, bad food and enforced intimacy with random bad company about sum it up for me. As a small boy, I noticed that “the pub” featured prominently on television, although nobody in my family circle ever went to one. I asked my mother who went to the pub and I’ve never quite got over her answer. “Lonely people”, she replied.

George Orwell liked pubs, but even as he described the “Moon in the Water…my ideal of what a pub should be”, he admitted it could be spoilt if “drunks and rowdies” should find their way there. Walking through the streets of London has been vastly more pleasant during the lockdown for not having to weave through the crowds of drinkers who usually block the streets.

The public house is considered to be the venue most synonymous with social life in Britain – certainly to foreign filmmakers. What we Britons like most about them is that they are “cosy”. Unfortunately, almost every aspect of that supposed cosiness is a friend of the virus. A single metre’s social distance is quickly breached as conviviality sets in. Shouting over hubbub broadcasts droplets of sputum. Drink drives customers into the germ hubs known as toilets, provided, of course, that they are not occupied, in which case a street corner or neighbouring garden is a worse convenience still.

The Premier League still has three weeks to run. Spectators are banned from the stadiums, but live sport will be shown on pub screens. Orwell, who stipulated that a pub should contain “neither a radio nor a piano”, would be disappointed. Government departments have issued instructions which will be difficult to enforce. There should be no cheering or chanting, the commentary volume should be kept low enough to enable normal conversation and the spectators should not stand or face each other.

Inside the pub, it should be table-service only for customers who have pre-booked. Inevitably, things will be more anarchic outside in beer gardens, overflow car parks and on the streets in towns. Even so, add in Perspex screens, hand sanitiser and contactless payment and there are unlikely to be many of the barmaids – middle-aged women who call everyone “dear” – that George Orwell dreamed of.

Instead, to reassure staff that they are working together safely, each employer has been ordered to display a signed five-step check card.

Covid-19 risk assessment. Tick. Cleaning, hand washing and hygiene procedures. Tick. Help people work from home. Tick. Maintain a 2m distance. Tick. Manage transmission risk. Tick.

Orwell’s vision is now seventy-four years old. Even back in the twentieth-century nostalgia ruled as he yearned for “the solid comfortable ugliness of the nineteenth century”. In 1946 pub use and beer drinking were already in decline as “creative communal amusements” were replaced by “solitary mechanical ones”.

These trends have continued in the digital age. Along with newspaper readerships and the viewership of terrestrial TV, trips to the pub are declining slowly but steadily. Since 2000, a quarter of pubs have shut for good. That’s some 13,000 “locals” gone, and that was before the impact and lost revenue of Covid-19. The under-25s may be going to the pub a bit more, but they are drinking less alcohol. The rest of us are inclined to celebrate quietly at home.

Orwell was ahead of his time in wanting his pub to be family-friendly, with “Mum” there as well as “Dad” and “the puritanical nonsense of excluding children” overthrown. But, he revealed, “there is no such place as the Moon under Water.” The best pub he could find only racked up 8/10 on his scorecard.

There still isn’t a perfect pub and even less chance of finding it. There are other ways of buying booze and other places to go to. Coffee shops, cafes and bars have also been hard hit during lockdown but have received none of the Prime Minister’s sentimental concern. The lure of the pub may not be quite as powerful as Boris Johnson, or indeed David Cameron, seems to find it.

As he appeals for the nation to enjoy its restored liberty with moderation the Prime Minister may, at last, have found something he has genuinely in common with FDR. In 1933, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was pleased but concerned when the states voted to repeal the 18th Amendment to the US Constitution, which established the Prohibition of alcohol.

“I trust in the good sense of the American people,” the President said in a proclamation, “that they will not bring upon themselves the curse of excessive use of intoxicating liquors, to the detriment of health, morals and social integrity.”

He need not have worried. “New York Celebrates With Quiet Restraint”, was the next day’s headline in the Grey Lady, a.k.a. The New York Times. The federal government went on to collect $258 million in windfall alcohol taxes – 9% of the total tax take – which went towards funding New Deal programmes.