16-May-2009
The Times - The life and soul of the drinking classes
Pubs are precious - warts, absentee husbands and all. But unstoppable forces are killing them
Every so often, I reach breaking point. “Why,” I say to my husband in my most silky managerial tone, the one he knows spells trouble, “do you prefer to spend your whole evening in the pub with a load of old farts rather than spending it at home with me?”
At which point he gives me that look combining manly defiance with bewildered hurt. “It's not like that,” he says. “You know it's not like that. I was just leaving when Cameron/ Allan/Obama [delete according to lateness of hour] came in and insisted on buying me another pint.”
Wearily, after making him suffer a bit, I renew our diplomatic treaty, whereby I accept that going to the village pub is for him as much about membership of a social club, a place where laughter, gossip, camaradie and neighbourliness hold sway as it is about alcohol. Whereby I also accept that I should never, ever take his absence personally. (Like the Treaty of Rome, it takes years to realise just how badly you've been conned.)
The pub, the implicit understanding goes, is our Archers set; our very own little soap opera, and my husband has one of the main parts (Eddie Grundy, no doubt about it). And what we openly acknowledge is that in our small rural village in Stirlingshire there still flourishes a genuine sense of community and the pub is one of its mainstays.
You want to buy some firewood, borrow a lawnmower, find out why the main road was blocked, discover who's bought the big house? You want to meet the locals, or see a radically different village from the one the mother and toddler group inhabits? Well, you go to the pub.
All that's good and bad in life is to be found in these little places. Good pubs attract good people, but there is never a guarantee of Utopia - though according to my husband you have to go regularly to check. And yes, bad pubs can be unfriendly places, bolt holes for grotty men who despise women, black people, gays and - in Scotland - the English, and are quite happy to broadcast it after a pint or two.
I will never forget when, soaked after a walk on a wet day, I ventured into a rural pub. As I stood steaming gently before the open fire, a local at the bar turned round, glanced at me and said loudly to no one in particular: “I do love the smell of roast pork.” In these circumstances one never knows whether to burst into tears or come back with an AK47. The only certainty is that you'll regret not choosing the latter for the rest of your life.
But that kind of thing doesn't happen often, and on the whole those of us who live in small communities with a pub should be aware how precious it is, warts, absentee husbands and all.
Lots of people are less lucky. According to the British Beer & Pub Association, pub closures are running at about six a day, almost ten times faster than in 2006 and nearly 20 times faster than in 2005. Go anywhere in the country and you see boarded-up windows, weeds sprouting in the gutters, peeling Development Opportunity signs. You glimpse the tumbleweed blowing down the street, hear the ghostly laughter from evenings long gone, and understand that you're looking at a relic of that most desolate type of history - the kind too fresh to be acknowledged as such. And it's a shame because you quite fancy a drink.
To lose the pub is to accept the death of everything communal. You can measure the health of a community - and its property prices - by how good the pub is. The Prince of Wales was on to this ages ago. He initiated the Pub is the Hub, an organisation that encourages them to diversify, taking post offices and shops under their roof. Hence places such as the Prussian Queen Village Shop in Saltfleetby St Clements, Lincolnshire, or the Shoulder of Mutton Post Office in Derbyshire. You'd go there for a drink for the names alone.
The evidence mounts. A report came out this week from the Institute for Public Policy Research and Camra, the Campaign for Real Ale, which said that pubs should be classless, egalitarian places where people from all walks of life rub shoulders. The IPPR recommends that pubs should receive business rates relief of 50 per cent in recognition of their place as “centres for the community”.
Pubs have been around since the 11th century but unstoppable 21st-century social forces - drink-driving legislation, the smoking ban, the internet, cheap supermarket booze - are killing them. Drinking, instead of being a public, moderate thing, is being done to extreme at home - and more people are dying of cirrhosis as a result. (At least when you drink yourself to death in a pub, you have a few laughs and lots of people come to your funeral.)
In tidying up society, making it neater, shinier, healthier and safer, something has been lost. I think it's called soul. Pubs are repositories of character and contact: messy, funny, traditional, politically incorrect places, which beat Facebook and YouTube for entertainment every time. And damn it - I've just given my husband the best excuse he's never had: “Sorry darling, unavoidably detained supporting the community.”
In the News
19-Jul-2010
Morning Advertiser - Pub is the Hub to aid 50 Welsh pubs
Pub is the Hub hopes to regenerate 50 rural Welsh pubs, thanks to support from the Prince of Wales, which will allow them to open an office there.
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17-Jul-2010
The Westmorland Gazette - New countryside fund launched
A NEW fund for farmers and people living and working in the countryside will be launched on Thursday (July 22).
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16-Jul-2010
Telepgraph - Prince of Wales will help regenerate 50 villages using pubs as community 'hubs'
The Prince of Wales will announce plans to regenerate 50 remote villages by using local pubs as community centres when he reveals the first beneficiaries of his new Countryside Fund charity next week.
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