So, the English pubs are to re-open in 13 hours time. Can’t see anything wrong with that, nor the carnage of opening all day on a Saturday when we should all be socially distancing. Still, it’ll be nice to go back to the local boozer, won’t it?
So, two quick questions at the massive- What’s your ‘local’ like and will you be going back to it any time soon?
My answer is that I am unlikely to be going back to the pub if I can help it. I never thought for a minute at the start of lockdown that I’d think this, but I really don’t miss the pub at all. My local (as in the nearest , but also most frequented) really isn’t up to much. The vibe is one of cheap booze rather than quality drink, you’ll get a fight in there around the pool table if Spurs have lost (google maps tells me that we are 67.8 miles away from White Hart Lane) and the jukebox is dominated by the greatest hits of the 80’s and 90’s. The pub has changed landlords about 12 times in the eight years that we have lived around here. On one occasion, walking home on a Sunday afternoon from town, we stopped in the pub for an hour. As there weren’t many people there and the vibe was most definitely doomy, I thought that I would have some fun with the internet jukebox, and I put on all of the longest songs I could think of- Fools gold, Stairway to heaven, I want you (she’s so heavy). It’s fair to say that putting The End by The Doors on really wasn’t the best of choices, and in someways it was the end for the pub. Two days later it closed down and didn’t re-open for about six months.
We only drink in this lovely venue as it is nearest, the other local pubs are Harvesters or Hungry Horses or whatever and the locals seem to tolerate us sitting in the corner for a couple of hours. Occasionally Mini Paws finds another small child to play with, but is otherwise happy with a bag of crisps and an ipad. There is a nice pub, just over a mile away, but you have to walk through Murder Park to get there, so funnily enough we don’t visit too often.
So as it goes I think I’ll stay at home, where at least I can control the songs (and we won’t have to close down if I put The Doors on).
Despite living here 19 years I have never been in my ‘local’, of the pubs here I don’t think there is one I would go into out of choice.
hated coming back from pubs reeking of smoke and never got back into the habit when smoking was banned.
I think in the last year March to March I could count on one hand the number of pubs I’ve been in.
Pub crawls a dim and distant past.
Rees-Smug (born 1969, don’t laugh) thinks we should drink a yard of ale.
I’m gutted, I’d prepared him a mug of instant coffee, made in the Gareth Hunt way.
Not really much of a pubbie in any traditional sense. Sure, I enjoy the occasional pub lunch, especially on holidays in favourite parts: Northumberland, Cornwall, Norfolk and Scotland. In fact, it feels odd to be in a pub after dark altogether, finding the atmosphere alters as regular boozers come in to wet their day. Here in Lichfield there are a couple of places that I am happy to while away an hour or two: usually a thursday mid afternoon, after finishing work for the week. Interestingly neither feel it appropriate to yet throw open their doors, waiting for the loons and goons, not their normal custom, to get it all out of their system in Wetherspoons before trolleying aggressively through wherever else they can gain entry.
Loons, goons, spoons. Got a certain vibe to it, that.
All my life I’ve longed for a local – you know, where everybody knows your name and you’ll always find someone to have a drink with. Never managed it. The pub closest to where we lived longest in London was one of those converted shop fronts, and was always being raided by the police, and someone was murdered there once. Nice.
I worked in the Magdala Tavern in Hampstead (you know, Ruth Ellis…) and everybody knew my name there, but invariably it was ‘Two pints of best and a sweet sherry please Mike.’ Closest I came to a local was the Sir Richard Steele on Haverstock Hill, where there was a circle of reprobates around the actor Ronald Fraser – he was in lots of films you’ve seen, notably Absolute Beginners. You could join his circle for the price of a drink., so probably doesn’t count.
So, to answer the OP question, no local, and no, not going back to it, or any other pub any time soon. Got used to drinking alone…
🙂
If I am free of a Saturday lunchtime, as will inevitably be the case tomorrow, I like to cycle the three miles to one of the three pubs in the next village. It’s a very horsey village – the ex council houses are half a million – yet the tap room illustrates the tenacity of the rural working class in surviving in the stockbroker belt. The tap room is genuinely classless and broad in its demographic. It’s also still the kind of pub where people get hired for work, where people flog their surplus eggs and garden produce and where you can get hold of ‘illegal substances’. By that I mean ‘if this doesn’t get rid of your mice, then it’s not mice that you’ve got’.
Anyway, I love it. I probably wouldn’t mix with any of the regulars in any other capacity, but it’s a proper welcoming community. But it’s also a Sam Smiths pub, so who knows whether Mr Humphrey Smith will be opening it up tomorrow – he is famously a law unto himself. One of his little foibles used to be that you couldn’t pay for anything with a card; that’s hardly in keeping with the current norm, is it?
A two mile cycle in another direction takes me to my previous local, which the landlord had done a great job of building up with outstanding hospitality and good grub. He deserves a revival and I have promised my dad a belated Father’s Day lunch there asap. Yes, I love the institution of the English pub and I will be getting back there, but then I have the good fortune to view the world through village-pub-tinted spectacles; there isn’t a Harvester or a ‘spoons for miles.
These wouldn’t be in Cheshire by any chance?
There are 5 pubs within a 15 minutes walk of my place.
One is a Harvester, so let’s discount that.
One is famously rough (flat roof, can’t see in the windows – you know the sort of thing), and I haven’t been in for in the 20+ years I have lived here.
The third used to be like the second, but has successfully rebranded to become more family orientated (2 meals for 7 quid and so), so let’s dismiss that one.
The fourth is large and well run. It has a decent size beer garden, a big room branded as a sports bar which draws a younger crowd and another which suits the middle aged and older boozer. But, and it’s a huge but, the beer is ropy; Greene King IPA, Doom Bar. On the rare occasions I am in there I’ll usually get a Guinness.
Last, but certainly not least, is a small friendly boozer with decent beer (and a policy of not stocking anything over 4%), but small is the word. It is on a small island at a traffic junction and although there is a tiny beer garden you couldn’t fit more that 3 people out there with distancing.
In short I can’t see myself going for a pint for a while yet.
Well that resolve didn’t last long. I’m sitting in the garden of the last mentioned job with a pint right now.
Hope you enjoyed your pint. How was the experience?
Other than being asked to sign in, pretty much as normal thanks.
The pub has three small rooms and most punters were in the centre one where the ‘entrance’ door for a one way system was, so there wasn’t a lot of distancing going on in there. I took my pint of Wibblers IPA (not on top form but not a time to complain about it) to the tiny beer garden.
I was on my own as I hadn’t planned ahead and just stopped for the one. I went for a walk via the local barbers, which is usually walk-in but turns out to be by appointment for now so I’ll get my lockdown mullet sorted on Tuesday, and, wouldn’t you know it, just happened to go home via the pub.
The current Sunday hours are 12 to 6, and it attracts an older crowd who aren’t likely to get out of hand. Signing in and hand sainitiser aside, plus a couple of signs about which door to use and the one-in one-out rule for the loos, it could have been any Sunday afternoon, and a welcome bit of normality.
My local had a name change and was redecorated just before lockdown.
I don’t recall the new name, but it has been painted emerald green, so you can guess what the idea behind the new name is.
Will I be going there? No. Definitely not.
I have noticed for the last couple of weeks that few people are observing social distancing any longer. If I want to put distance between me and an oncoming stranger I am the one who has to make the move. So given the situation on the street when people are sober, what is it going to be like when people have had a drink?
The question I have not seen any answer to is: – how are toilets going to be marshalled?
They tend to be pretty tight spaces anyway. Is someone going to stand by the door allowing only one person in at a time?
Toilets max 2 (over here anyway), and/or alternate ones that you piss in cannot be used.
yes my understanding is that most pubs will employ someone at door determining when you can go in
@Carl funny you should say about the social distancing we had thought that it was working well in London when we had been to visit our daughter
Social distancing at urinals is my favourite part of the new normal.
My local here is fine, I am in an area with many hi tech workers and lunchtime is when they (used to) make their money. It is normally fairly quiet evenings and weekends. I have been twice since we were allowed to and it was fine. We can only sit outside and tables are regularly disinfected and are well apart. Food is not bad and they have sa decent selection of ales.
Closest I ever had to a local in the UK was when I lived in North London, when I entered the pub as soon as the landlord saw me he would start pouring my usual pint. In those days (my early 20s) I was going there 5 or 6 days a week though …
I’m not sure too many people are going to the pub tomorrow. Only one person I’ve spoken to is venturing out to his local – it’s a small village, and he lives across the road.
I’ve got 2 pubs at the end of my road, and have only been in each once. They’re a bit “local pub for local people” and have been known to have pitched battles between them.
Slightly further, but still walkable is a Harvester, a Hungry Horse, an a sizzling. Harvester isn’t bad – set in the middle of a large park with a generous garden, but can get very busy. Tho other two have no real garden (and no real beer, or welcome) to speak of.
One other – a cheap food (2 for £10) but good beer – has been sending out emails and Facebook stuff to get people to book a table. Sensible, but probably overfilled (cynical, moi?).
I can’t help feeling Pubs and Restaurants are opening for Economic and “keep the plebs happy” reasons – personally I think it’s too soon.
“I trust the British Public” – so do I, but there is a relatively large proportion that I don’t
My local is about 4 miles away, which is a bit of walk home as I dont drive. The Landlady and ex husband are both comedians who moved to the area after working at a local venue comedy night and falling in love with the place and the people .
They have taken over a run down rough hole and sucessfully turned it into a thriving friendly community pub. I`m currently missing the Friday night band nights and monthly comedy nights ( for your favourite price of..free) However they have decided not to open at the moment due to the still quite high rates of infection in East Lancashire.
I must admit I think I will still be quite wary of being in such a small place with so many people and if there is any nonsense like ordering drinks by mobile phone, i`m goosed as I dont have one.
@Uncle-Mick , don’t drive, no mobile phone. How did you manage to get on the blog?
Laptop and Ipod are my only techy necessities. I only got on the internet because I couldn`t by Radio Stars cds in our local record shop ( Back in the day of course)
I’ve had a few really good local pubs over the years: The Rayners in, er, Rayners Lane, The Whittington on the edge of Pinner, The Crown In Chiddingfold and The Cricketers In Farncombe/Godalming. The thing they all had in common was a very mixed clientele who were willing to chat with whoever was in at the same time as them. We have a micro pub here which is ok but they have a fondness for obscure real ales and my interest in that sort of thing has passed. I won’t be rushing back to the pub although we have tentatively booked lunch at a large 1930s pub within walking distance for a weekday towards the end of the month. Not sure we can justify the expense at the moment so we may bail out nearer the time. If we go, it will be to meet friends and that brings social distancing issues so who knows.
We have seven pubs in our village. Eight if you include the Conservative Club, so that’s seven then.
There’s only one I haven’t been in. It appears to have karaoke on every night which is enough to put me off.
Another I’ve only been to when the village beer festival is on. It seems to be where the youngsters hang out so once again nothing to draw me in.
The rest are all pretty good in their own ways. A couple concentrate more on food but it’s good food and they do a decent pint too. Two others are more drinking pubs and the other, my favourite, does a cracking pint and half decent food, in addition to being the sort of place where the likes of me can pop in on my own for a quiet pint and not feel, or be made to feel, uncomfortable as a result of being on my own.
Am I going to be heading in there any time soon? No. As others have said, social distancing seems to be on the decline so I can’t imagine feeling safe in a boozer.
Apparently the farmers’ market is on tomorrow morning on the Green for the first time since February and I suspect that could be quite busy too. As good as it is and as much as I like supporting the local producers, I am a little wary of going at the moment as I think all this is happening too soon. I might wander up early doors and see how the land lies.
When I was younger, regular pubs were almost entirely centred around proximity to work.
I was working full time at the age of 16 and if I was with a group from work (lunches and at least two nights in a working week) I was never, ever, not even once asked my age. You might think I was one of these large, hairy types – but not a bit of it. If anything, I looked a good two years younger.
On one occasion, many years after I worked there – I found myself in Sutton on a Saturday afternoon. As the football results were coming in and I was curious to know what was happening (pre Internet) – I popped into a pub I used to go to very regularly with my workmates after work. There were familiar faces in there and I knew the landlord and bar staff by name. That was a nice experience – being greeted like a prodigal son. I found myself on a bar stool, like one of the regulars. The regulars were a smattering of men, various ages but all exceedingly quiet. Either standing or sitting at the bar in total silence.
Regulars in a bar brings to mind the TV comedy Cheers, where people talk in snappy one-liners in a vibrant bar and amusing situations develop every day. This is not what happens in suburban England.
Now I am a bit of a talker – and going to a pub to stare into space for hours on end nursing one or two pints (these guys weren’t really pissheads) is not my thing at all. So after the results had finished and I’d had a couple of pints, I left.
While they were not exactly unfriendly, the whole situation was odd. The context of my presence in that pub over several years was as part of a group of idiots who came in after work, played darts and talked bollocks. I felt like I’d made a misjudgement in pub etiquette.
These last couple of years we haven’t much frequented the village pub that’s only 200 yards away on the crossroads in the centre of the place. The beer’s average at best, the food’s overpriced but delivered in quantity (to fill the local Tory farmers and their blue rinsed partners while they slug down the cider, also average). The welcome is cheery and effusive (they know me by name, they can correctly suggest the first pint etc.) yet somehow it’s all rather false. It’s one of those boozers that makes all of its profits flogging functional but uninteresting grub, and almost London priced at that; it supports a small handful of inveterate bar slumpers, but is effectively empty by about 9:30 each night except for them. And it looks and feels like a Victorian railway waiting room. No ambience to speak of.
We go now, if we are going to pub it for the evening, to the next, even smaller, settlement on a crossroads about three quarters of a mile away down a lane. There’s one pub there, very well run with pretty good beer and excellent but limited grub. A tenner gets you a really good 12 inch pizza for example, or very good fish & chips. The bar looks like a country pub should. Low ceiling, wooden beams, flag floor, big open fireplace, mullioned windows. Straight out of film location land, but it’s really like that. The place was a coaching inn for centuries – you can still see the old entrance where the horses went through to the stables at the back, and there’s a well in the yard. The local gibbet used to stand in what is now the beer garden. I have suggested that we could profitably re-instate that feature, and put it to occasional good use.
My pal the landlord has instigated a military grade system for letting folks in via a queueing system, getting customers to tables, taking orders only from the table – not at the bar, staff wearing face masks and shields all round and so on and so on. Ghastly but required. The local plod came around yesterday to see him; apparently quite a few pubs in the nearest town have decided not to open today (July 4th) as they think opening for the first time on a Saturday is bonkers and asking for trouble. (Hello Boris, did that not occur to you too, you dolt?) As a result, the local town being well supplied with oafish drinkers, the police are worrried in case there’s a clueless exodus out into the sticks villages looking for beer and probably bringing a good dose of Bournemouth Beach Boorishness along for the ride. They asked my pal if he had “contingency measures” planned in case of an overwhelming. He suggested that if things look like getting out of hand, he might call them for assistance, oddly enough. He got blank looks. I told him he should have a shotgun visible behind the bar, but then I remembered that we aren’t allowed to do anything like that. I hope he survives the first day back at the bar face; they’ve struggled hard to keep the business alive these last several months, and now that they are free to trade as a public house again, I just have a nagging feeling that there might be a rocky ride ahead this weekend.
We won’t be going, that’s for sure. Even if they have a lout-free relaunch, I don’t fancy having to queue for a wazz, wait for a member of their poor frazzled staff to see me waving before I can get another milk stout, and then going home wondering if we’ve picked up more than a couple of drinks and supper.
We have a decent Rhone red lined up for later, and a pile of tiny Jersey Royals to eat with butter and chives, roast vegetables and some rather good goat’s cheese. We’ll be staying in and starting a new boxed set on the idiot box, while crossing our fingers for our pals in the pub.
When we moved into our current gaff we visited the pub at the bottom of the road and I was delighted to find an open fire, nicotine embalmed ceiling, old boy behind the bar and draught Speckled Hen. My blood ran cold when he told me it was closing for a refit shortly and his niece and French husband were taking it over to “do more food”. Yep, gastro pub ahoy. Now it is cliquey, aimed at braying 30 somethings who want to spend 14 quid on a burger (which are nice and come from the butcher in town where they can be acquired for a tenth of that). The beer can be OK but I rarely go in now after I took my father in law for a pre Sunday lunch pint and we were told we couldn’t sit down despite most of the tables being empty (but “booked”). My FIL might be over 80 but he takes no shit from anyone and sat down anyway, saying, in broad Bolton, “I’ll move when they get ‘ere”. The git behind the bar blinked first.
I tend to use the next boozer on my route to town which has decent Admans, the food is passable but it’s a nice old building with a good mixed crowd. Rather too many TV screens for my liking but it’s ok. The town centre has a few excellent pubs and a lot of crap ones.
Back to the OP. I won’t be going to any of them. The current regulations seem designed to remove everything I like about going to the pub so I shall be staying home with a bottle of Cote de Rhône thanks.
There’s a definite Rhone at home pattern emerging here.
Cheers! @Twang
And you VV!
I have a couple of bottles of Châteauneuf-du-Pape in the wine chiller – maybe I should crack one open and join the party
Gigondas here. Pull up a chair and I’ll get you a glass.
Now booked for France at the end of the month so I can top up Twang Towers’ wine cellar which is badly depleted…
The reserved tables in pubs has really annoyed me on a couple of occasions.
I should have adopted your FiL’s attitude. I have been there with friends, we have stood. An hour or so later we’ve moved on and the tables have remained empty the whole time.
A lot of pubs rely on food sales to get customers in in the first place.
It’s an annoyance for the management when people book a table on a busy night (weekends, generally) and then don’t turn up.
If someone books a table in advance for a group of people and doesn’t show on the day, it might mean that another group of people who turn up without having booked have to go elsewhere. That way the pub loses out on selling food and drink to either group, plus there can be drinkers who leave because they can’t get a seat.
But let’s face it a landlord is not going to risk pissing off a punter who’s made a booking for a group of people to eat and drink, and then turns up to find all the tables are occupied.
When I lived in Cornwall the village pub nearest to me had the front half given over to tables with plastic menus and vinegar bottles, and the back half given over to the pool table. So you had pissed oafs at the back, the occasional diner at the front, and one or two dogged old soaks at the bar.
Where I lived elsewhere in Cornwall didn’t serve food at all. “This is a pub, what do I want to serve food for?” was the landlord’s refrain. I doubt he was able to stick to that though.
It’s almost impossible for a pub to make money catering to just drinkers these days. Unless they actively encourage the pisshead oafs.
The Guigal Cote De Rhône from Majestic is superb. 🍷
I spent a lot of time in my local in the 90s. There would always be someone in there you could have a chat and a laugh with. I’d go in for a quick one after work and end up staying all evening. Funny thing about it was, although there must have been about 30 regulars I spent the best part of a decade with, I never thought of them as friends. I couldn’t imagine having them over for dinner. Perhaps that was the fun of it – spending time with people of all ages and backgrounds, with whom you had very little in common expect a liking for Harvey’s Best. After we moved away I’d go back once or twice a year and they’d all still be there.
Every photojournalist in the country will be after the same image this evening – pissed-up revellers arm-in-arm, clutching bottles and staggering down a crowded high street. We’ve already decided that’s how today will go. Half the people in the pubs will be putting photos on social media of all the idiots in the pubs.
Yes, that’s how I feel about my local regulars. I actually think the lack of commitment to each other is one of the advantages – take it or leave it, no obligation to be there. It also means I can enjoy their company, knowing full well that I don’t agree with many of their views, and they with mine. It’s a good lesson in rubbing along with a different crowd from the narrow bubble of close friends.
Mate of mine always has a local. He strolls down the the pub when he gets in from work at 6.15 ish and has a few pints with the crowd in there, knows their names etc. He’s always done this, even after moving house – just finds the bright pub and that’s it. I never have – apart from anything else I don’t want to start drinking at 6.15!
Too late?
Glad I’m not the only one. I don’t mind meeting mates in a pub for a pint, but I’ve never got the traditional thing of having a local “where everyone knows your name”. The GLW on the other hand understands it just fine. Its probably why she accuses me of teetotalism.
Whereas I am actually teetotal, and my local keeps some 0.5% beer in stock for me. Although I know the proprietor, and usually have a cup of tea.
PARKLIFE!!
That, chiz, has made hot beverage come out of my nostrils. Thankyou.
I’m not wild about pubs. I’ll go to a nice quiet one – there are a lot of really good ones in my little town – as long as the music is at conversation-friendly levels and there’s no sport on. I also don’t really like beer all that much, and certainly not “ale”, which has always tasted sort of fetid to me ever since I was a teenager – there’s something of the hot-weather landfill about the taste of real ale to me. I like spirits mostly, and at least these days you can get good ones in pubs, rather than Teachers and Coke.
My problem with pubs is when they’re too busy, which they will be this weekend. And the rest of the time, its tough to find one which isn’t either full of young arseholes in very neat, tight polo shirts, or – at the other extreme – sparsely populated by the Real Ale Twats from Viz, and selling nothing I really want to drink.
http://viz.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/050_viz207_twats.jpg
Anyway I haven’t missed the pub. I’ve missed my friends, but for me the pub has only ever been a place you put up with in order to see your mates with a nice (enough) drink. It’s never been an end in itself for me.
My local is a St. Austell’s in a tourist trap. The best drinks are Proper Job and H.S.D., they’re about £4.20 a pint, maybe more since the enforced lay-off.
People don’t get outrageously drunk, because they can’t afford to.
I mainly use it during the football season as a one-drink stop-off on the way back from football or rugby.
The locals all congregate around the bar, quite intimidating to outsiders, I grunt a bit at them, mumble “Redruth,” “Arsenal,” “Plymouth Argyle,” or some such-like, and catch the footie scores on the TV. I make a point of laughing out loud if Arsenal, Chelsea or Spurs have lost, obviously.
I use the Hotel more, very posh but the prices aren’t much different, I often have a coffee for a very reasonable £2.50, but the main advantage over the pub is the newspapers.
Not sure what it’ll be like now, but four months ago on a Saturday/Sunday, they’d have The Telegraph, Times, Guardian/Observer and the excellent weekend Financial Times, all strewn across the front table.
An hour picking out the best bits from them (the Arts sections/magazines) was well worth the price of a coffee or beer.
Added bonus – Residents who had ordered their own paper for their room would often have read their copy and left it in the lounge area … so … erm … how to put this? … oh, yeah … free newspaper!
Lovely garden, too.
On a slightly more grim note – the UK government has basically given up, hasn’t it?
Open the pubs, sternly tell people to socially distance and follow rules -knowing full well that they won’t. They’re letting the virus off the leash to scamper all over the park.
Most genocides are ruthless campaigns executed with chilling efficiency. This is what corrupt incompetence looks like and this is what it does.
I think they’re recognising it’s fraying anyway.
After two generations allowing and encouraging oafish selfishness and an ignorant sense of entitlement without responsibility, it’s no surprise that things start to unravel after less than 6 months.
Hate to say it, but if some country starts a war now, start learning their language; the British are no longer up to a prolonged fight.
Exactement. I refer you to my fairly frequent harping on about the football hooligans in Marseilles in 2016. The Ingerland Army.
Hopefully people follow the rules:
“But it’s a very different sort of Saturday evening from pre-lockdown expectations. Customers are expected to book a table in advance, to register their details on arrival and to stay no more than three hours.”
BBC
Well yes genocide is one theory I suppose. Another is that some people, with the same facts at their disposal, assessed the risk level differently from others.
That sounds more forgiving and reasonable than the situation deserves.
They’ve not given up. They wanted “herd immunity”, i.e. for the virus to let rip and kill off the elderly and disabled, and now they are going to get it.
12000 jobs lost in the hospitality sector last week alone. Restaurant chains going into administration, INTU shopping centres too… that’s just in the last seven days. Economic collapse kills the elderly and disabled too.
Based on the sales figures coming through, ‘Super Saturday’ was a very restrained return, social distancing measures indoors were well observed, and looking at the poor weather forecast for July, there’s a teeny weeny possibility that the Government might have got this right.
Even if it turns out to look that way, I think the phrase would be “more by luck than judgement”.
And they haven’t “given up”, they’ve never had a sufficient handle on things to be in a position to give anything up; they’re still stuck struggling to get to grips with it.
I was asked to put up a few posters, pretty benign stuff, about keeping your distance/being considerate etc. in our village. Put them up Friday, afternoon – of the ten, five have been ripped down … and the staples have been left in the wood. Arggghhh! Sorry, a minor thing, but one of my pet hates.
My faith in the British public is the square root of diddley squat.
I know the media are going to be on the lookout for the worst, but take a look at the picture at the top of this page. Jeez! Don’t they know there’s a war on?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-53296689
I’d be a bit wary – lots of the beach shots looked like that at first, but the packed crowds turned out to be a result of foreshortening from a ground-level perspective. I bet it looked a lot more distanced from a birds-eye view.
Yes, I made that point about the beach shots in another thread, but was told I was completely wrong. Not sure I was. And the rule is 1 metre anyway now I believe, which is pretty much normal.
You’re not wrong AFAIK – here’s a good post about it on FullFact.
https://fullfact.org/online/photos-social-distancing/
People are very keen to do the covidiot bit, but death rates and hospitalisations are going fairly steadily down each day – the beaches and the protests don’t seem to have brought a spike with them (at least here). I know a lot of people are really anxious, so it’s understandable to want everyone to stay indoors, but also some people just like to feel superior to the great unwashed.
Yes, I also said that we would have to see if there was a spike because of it. I doubted that there would be because people would indeed mostly social distance apart from the people they were with and would also be in the open air with presumably a reasonable breeze also blowing.
People packing into pubs indoors is another matter, but it seems the guidelines are there to avoid them becoming too full.
In England it is “1 metre plus”, which is short for “Either 2m; or 1m plus something else such as a face mask or visor, or Perspex screen, plus other forms of PPE, and hand washing or hand sanitiser”.
Which is, depnding on your outlook, either (a) a bit of a mouthful or (b) too difficult for the plebs to understand.
I can’t see how you can wear a face mask and drink a pint – through a straw, perhaps. It’s times like these I’m thankful that Mercaptopurine makes me teetotal.
P.S. Interesting interview on Radio 4 this morning, with a Soho drinker in his 20s living with his parents. “This isn’t safe but I’m here. I’m part of the problem, aren’t I?”
Ah, did not know about the 1 metre plus thing. Guessing that in a pub you are only actually imbibing 10% of the time or so, use your mask when talking. I am finding it difficult to understand people sometimes though when I can’t see their lips, maybe I am deaf.
I suspect the policy was designed to be a headline-grabbing “1 METRE” with all the rest in much smaller print, for the few of us who take notice of such trivial details. “Led by the science”, my arse.
Personally, when I roast those rammed onto the beaches, I’m not relying upon photos in the rags, I’m relying on first-hand information from my brother-in-law, who lives at Lulworth.
The foreshortening thing operates on the human eye too though. I’ve been on lots of walks and runs during lockdown where I could’ve sworn I was approaching a big crowd, started swearing about bloody irresponsible idiots under my breath, and then when I got there, they weren’t really close to each other at all.
Probs best just keep an eye on the data and see whether things are getting worse.
Oh FFS this is your obsession. The view from the top of a 200 meter chalk cliff gives you a very good impression of how the frolicking hoi-polloi are keeping themselves socially distanced, I can assure you.
?
I’ve mentioned it twice, both times on this thread, not sure how that qualifies as an obsession?
That’s second hand information, surely?
The first Durdle Dor packed beach outrage (TMFTL) was what, five weeks ago? Does that one not count?
Intereresting suggestion in the Graun about the outside being up to 19x safer than the inside. Yet the biggest pub outdoor area of pub in Lich is all cordoned off to siphon all the punters indoors. Odd, that, I thought.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jul/05/anthony-costello-world-health-organization-independent-sage-coronavirus?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
Ridiculous. We are still not allowed inside here except to use the bathroom. Over the border in Quebec that is allowed and cinemas and concert venues can technically open (with physical distancing).
There are two pubs which I think of as my local.
The first is in the nearest town, and I’ve been going to it as long as I’ve lived in Somerset, some thirty years or so. Small, comfortable and usually idiot-free. It has often been the only pub in the town to feature in the Beer Guide, and though owned by a brewery, its most popular beer comes from another brewer. There’s been at least six sets of ‘mein hosts’ during that time. No food, although it has in the past sold particularly scaggy rolls. Now dartboard-less, my mate and I now have to go up the other end of town to a rather soulless Greene King pub, which at least has a rather splendid dartboard.
The second is a free-house a few miles north; too far to walk to but easily cycleable to. It regularly wins the local CAMRA Pub Of The Year award, selling a well-kept ever-changing range of beers, in all strengths and styles. Food is excellent. Is the pub of choice to meet up with a group of friends.
I really want to visit both, but I think I’ll wait a while before doing that. The first has so few seats, that you might not be able to get in and the second – although much larger – is booking only. You need to think ahead now, if want to be spontaneous.
As night follows day…pubs are closing again because customers have tested positive.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-53315702
Surely in order to get test results by Monday they would have had to suspect they were infected and submitted the samples before the pubs opened?
You’d think so…makes you wonder if there are other people not owning up.
Drove past the Burnham-on-Sea pub only last Thursday. Used to be a work colleague’s local.
Assuming that pubs are actually getting customers to sign in, I wonder how many are leaving real names / numbers?
I wondered about that. Perhaps you have to show some sort of photo ID. Not much use with a mask on.
Can’t you get results in less than 24 hrs now?
I know one person who was informed she had tested negative from a test she had never taken.
Which was nice.
How very reassuring. Good to know we have a world class system.
Three have closed so far out of 18,000 that opened – isn’t that sort of how the system is supposed to work?
And the infection, hospital admission rate and death rate are going down all the time.
I’m all for caution, but lockdown isn’t a good in itself, and some people have got a bit fetishistic/absolutist about it. If things can be relaxed without a total reversal of the overall downward trend, I’m all for that.
Yes positive tests are inevitable. New rule came in here (Ontario) at midnight. Masks obligatory in all public indoor places. We had no deaths yesterday for first time since March.
Meanwhile down here Victorians cant cross State borders and the area of Greater Melbourne has gone back into hard lockdown for 6 weeks due to a spike. A range of clusters, some associated with specific events/people but some community outbreaks have not been sourced so the experts are, to use a technical term, shitting themselves.