Something in the air

With discussion about coronavirus now moving to talk of the programme for unwinding the lockdown, one idea that has been floated is to allow pubs to open their beer gardens, but not inside bars. It’s doubtful how many pubs would find this viable, especially if the customers were expected to adhere to strict social distancing, and in any case it’s likely that, as soon as it was permitted, we would end up with a prolonged spell of rainy weather.

However, this has prompted MP Mark Pritchard to call for restrictions on smoking in beer gardens if it is implemented;

If cafes, restaurants and pubs with outside areas open next week, then new rules on smoking in external public areas should be introduced by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government. "Outside seating should not be dominated by smokers exposing customers to secondary smoke.”

Not surprisingly, Simon Clark of smokers’ rights group Forest has criticised this demand:

Mr Clark said businesses should be free to choose their own policy on smoking outside.

"Imposing new rules that may reduce the number of customers who are tempted back after the lockdown restrictions have been eased could hinder their ability to get back on their feet," he said.

"If Mr Pritchard has evidence that smoking outside poses a risk to non-smokers he should produce it.

"Smokers should obviously be considerate to those around them, but we don't need more rules to govern our behaviour."

Mr Clark added that in the past Mr Pritchard had expressed a personal dislike of breathing in cigarette smoke.

"It is quite wrong for Mr Pritchard to use the Covid crisis as an opportunity to tackle one of his pet hates, especially when there is no risk to the public."

It should be remembered that smoking continued to be permitted in outdoor areas because it was felt that there was little or no risk to others from environmental tobacco smoke. (The same is true indoors, of course, but that’s another matter). If people don’t like it, that’s up to then, but it seems a warped sense of priorities to be more worried about the risk from second-hand smoke than from coronavirus. There’s also plenty of evidence that smoking actually acts as a prophylactic against the disease.

For most of the year, the only people in beer gardens are smokers, and their tolerant friends, because they simply have no alternative. Then, every year, as regular as clockwork, antismokers see that the sun has come out, emerge blinking into the light, and to their horror find that there are already smokers in the beer garden.

There’s nothing to stop licenses voluntarily choosing to ban smoking in all or part of their beer gardens, if they feel that their business will benefit. But they should remember that smokers, over the course of a year, are the people most likely to use beer gardens in the first place. Can they really afford to lose that trade? Despite the ban, smokers on average still spend more time and money in pubs than non-smokers, presumably because many non-smokers are prissy, health-obsessed people who don’t find pubs attractive in the first place. On cool, overcast days, non-smoking sections of beer gardens are deserted.

If smoking in outdoor areas was to be wholly or partly prohibited by law, it would make it much harder for the pub trade to recover. And what’s the betting that, once imposed, it would never be relaxed again?

Making a rod for your own back?

Although we in the United Kingdom are still awaiting any kind of official announcement, countries around the world are now publishing their programmes for the progressive relaxation of the coronavirus lockdown. Last week it was the turn of Ireland, which has many economic and social similarities. Their lockdown was somewhat more severe than ours, particularly in terms of travel restrictions, and they are proceeding very cautiously, and certainly much more slowly than the Czech Republic, which I reported on a couple of weeks ago. However, arguably any light at the end of the tunnel is better than none, as the sheer uncertainty of its duration has for many been the most stressful aspect of the lockdown.

It is noticeable that pubs and bars will be right at the back of the queue, not being allowed to reopen until August 10th, while restaurants will be able to trade from June 29th. As I have set out it in the past, it’s very doubtful whether such a distinction would be workable in this country, where many pubs effectively trade as restaurants, and many restaurants have identical licences and planning status to pubs.

However, the trade bodies representing Irish pubs have written to the government proposing a set of measures that would allow some pubs at least to open six weeks earlier, as set about below:

At first sight, this seems to strip pubs of most of what makes them attractive in the first place, and has been pooh-poohed by many in the trade in this country. However, they could well be workable for many food-oriented establishments, and for Wetherspoons, who already have a remote ordering app and table service in place ready to go. Surely some pubs being able to open is better than none at all.

On the other hand, there must be a risk that such restrictions, if they prove workable for some pubs, will be kept in place for much longer than six weeks, thus ending up delaying, or even permanently preventing, the remainder from reopening. And there is a question mark as to what extent the trade should get involved in devising restrictive regimes to operate within. Wouldn’t it be better to await government proposals and then respond to them? As I have said before in connection with the Portman Group’s heavy-handed approach to advertising regulation, “If you’re going to be crucified anyway, it’s little consolation that you’ve been allowed to build your own cross.”

Some in the British pub trade seem to have reacted to the lockdown simply by wringing their hands and saying it’s all too difficult. But pubs are going to reopen eventually and, being realistic, it’s highly likely that initially they will have to operate under some restrictions, so it makes sense to plan for that rather than dismissing it out of hand.

It’s hard to see any pubs – or restaurants – being workable under the strict social distancing guidelines currently in operation. But the two-metre rule was something plucked out of the air, rather like five-a-day and fourteen alcohol units per week. It perhaps served an initial purpose, but it’s not really a sensible yardstick to use going forward.

It’s not difficult to envisage a somewhat relaxed social distancing environment under which pubs were required to operate for a period, including measures such as an overall capacity restriction, no standing at the bar (and possibly a post office-style queue for ordering), no more than four people at a table and groups required to be at least a yard apart. Presumably by this time relatives living in different households, and friends, will be allowed to meet socially in small numbers. The issue of toilets which is often raised is a red herring – the risk of transmission from very fleeting proximity is negligible, and no more than that from passing in a supermarket aisle.

And I have to say that in many of my local pubs, at lunchtimes when there’s no football being shown, it wouldn’t really be too difficult for the customers to keep six feet apart anyway.

Corona effect

A month ago, although it seems far longer, I wrote: “I have had some thoughts on how the coronavirus crisis is likely to affect the pub and brewing industries, but I really don’t feel it appropriate to comment on this until there is at least some sign of light at the end of the tunnel.” However, now that there is at least talk of a progressive unwinding of the lockdown, I thought I would return to the subject. What follows is really just a series of speculative bullet points rather than fully-developed arguments.

• Obviously, with pubs having been closed for what looks like at least three months, it is likely to do significant damage to the pub trade, and indeed the wider tourism and hospitality industry. However, it remains to be seen to what extent people are going to flock back. As Tandleman has said, some will be back in the pubs like a rat up a drainpipe, while others will be much more cautious. Ironically, in view of the previous trend, wet-led pubs may recover more quickly than food-oriented ones. There may also be a problem with pubs initially having to operate under various restrictions such as limiting capacity.

• Some existing pubs probably won’t reopen, while many projected openings of new bars that are in the pipeline will be abandoned.

• It will encourage the long-term shift from on- to off-trade drinking. However, I suspect it won’t give a huge boost to mail-order beer because of the increased cost aspect. Some specialist off-licences that decided to close for the duration, even though not legally compelled to, may have cause to regret that choice. Customers will remember who did stay open.

• It is also likely to precipitate the long-heralded shakeout of the microbrewery sector, where many have been saying for some time that there is considerable oversupply. However, perhaps perversely, it may be the “hobby brewers”, who can shut down and reopen with little financial pain, who ride it out, while those a little bit bigger who relied on brewing to make a living may call it a day.

• Some substantial breweries that depend mostly on on-trade sales may not survive. All breweries apart from the very smallest will realise that there is a benefit to offering bottled and canned beer as another string to their bow, although achieving distribution is always going to be crucial.

• It will enforce a substantial financial retrenchment upon CAMRA, which is heavily dependent (some might say too dependent) on income from beer festivals. Given that they involve a lot of people crammed together in a small space, festivals may be one of the last things to return to full health.

• It will accelerate the decline of High Streets, which have been pretty much dead during the lockdown. Even before, they were increasingly becoming social spaces as opposed to just retail spaces.

• In contrast, it will strengthen the role of physical supermarkets as essential suppliers, especially given that there have often been long waits for home delivery slots.

• It will accelerate the move from cash to card payments, which I wrote about here.

• It will punish independent retailers in areas such as clothing, furniture and electrical goods at the expense of major supermarkets and homeware stores that were able to stay open selling a range of products.

But a lot will depend on how willing people are to resume their previous habits as opposed to exercising greatly increased caution for an extended period of time. And that, at present, we just do not know. However, while they were criticised for it at the time, some encouragement can be taken from people’s willingness to visit beauty spots and seaside resorts on some of the fine days we have had during the lockdown. Pubgoers, after all, have never been known for being amongst the most fastidious sections of society.

I’ll also add the point I made on Tandleman’s blog, that it's easy to say that pubs don't really matter in the overall scheme of things, but they are only a subset of the wider tourism and hospitality industry, which is the third biggest sector of the economy. Until that can be restored to something approaching normality, we're still going to be in the economic doldrums. And it can't really function without what could be broadly described as “eat-in catering”.

Over by Christmas?

Although it now seems only a distant memory, yesterday marked five weeks since pubs, bars and restaurants were instructed to close due to the cornonavirus crisis. However, over a month in, thoughts are now turning to the process for relaxing the lockdown. In a possibly unguarded moment, government minister Michael Gove stated that he couldn’t rule out pubs not being allowed to reopen until Christmas, although neither did he say this was likely.

However, this was seized on in the ex-newspaper known as the Independent, where one Jane Fae stated that she wouldn’t be too upset if Gove’s speculation came to pass. Reading the piece in more detail, though, it seems that this has a great deal to do with her own “long and difficult relationship” with alcohol. And it becomes evident that it’s not pubs in general that she objects to, but just ones that don’t fit her preferred model.

In Italy, when I socialised with friends and family, even late into the evening, it was as likely at a cafe or gelateria (ice cream parlour) as anywhere alcohol-focused. The difference, compared to the UK, was marked: most town centres boast spaces where families can and do go out on an evening.

But, of course, if she took the trouble to look, she would find that many modern British pubs sell far more food than drink and bend over backwards to be welcoming to families (much to the dismay of some of us). It is the typical negative stereotype of pubs as dysfunctional drinking dens that remains so popular with people who scarcely ever visit them. And many pubs offer a wide range of social activities, support their local communities through charitable events, and provide a social outlet for lonely people who otherwise would have very little human contact.

It’s also, as I’ve discussed before, impossible to come up with any kind of watertight distinction between “pubs” and “eating places”, given that many pubs now function primarily as restaurants anyway, while many places that present themselves as restaurants actually have a licensing and planning status that is identical to pubs. It seems that lockdown has simply given free rein to people’s censorious tendencies across a whole range of activities. “Isn’t it great that nobody’s now doing [insert particular thing I don’t like]?”

Obviously the lockdown has a severe economic cost, and the time will come when this, and the associated human suffering it creates, will be felt to exceed the benefits. Ultimately that is a political decision, but it is a decision that will have to be made. Tourism and hospitality are the third largest economic sector in Britain, and the economy won’t be able to return to anything like health until they are able to function. It goes far beyond just pubs. I’m not going to make any specific predictions, but I’m pretty confident that I’ll be able to enjoy a pint in a pub well before Christmas, much to Ms Fae’s chagrin.

Meanwhile, in a faraway country of which we know nothing, the Czech Republic have published a lockdown exit timetable that will see indoor areas of bars open again on 25 May, or four weeks from next Monday. Regardless of the current swirl of speculation, are we really likely to be that far behind?

Shop your neighbour

The coronavirus lockdown has given encouragement to two of the less edifying aspects of the British character – the curtain-twitching love of informing on your neighbours, and the liking of the police for taking an over-zealous approach and making up the rules as they go along. Both of these tendencies were combined when no less than the Chief Constable of Greater Manchester, Ian Hopkins, made a public statement that the Shakespeare pub in Farnworth, near Bolton, had been serving drinks during the lockdown, and would have its licence revoked.

However, egg on face was in order when, as the Manchester Evening News reports:

But council licensing officials have now confirmed they had found 'no evidence' it had broken the rules during a visit two days later.

In his radio interview, the chief constable said The Shakespeare in Farnworth would have its licence revoked for allegedly letting drinkers in through the back door.

However, when the Manchester Evening News contacted the owners of the pub, they denied any wrongdoing.

A spokesman for Hawthorn Leisure, which runs the pub, said at the time: “There is absolutely no truth to suggestions that The Shakespeare in Farnworth has been serving drinks during the lockdown.

“Hawthorn Leisure has been strictly adhering to Government guidance, and the pub has not been open since it shut its doors on Friday night.

"Furthermore, our manager and her husband are both self-isolating due to pre-existing health concerns.

I’m not denying that any pubs have been breaching the lockdown conditions, but most of these cases seem to have been false alarms. Some have been genuine mistakes arising from observing the licensees doing cleaning or repairs, or engaged in permitted trading activities such as providing takeaways. But others have undoubtedly been driven by malicious intent, with people working out a grievance against the pub in question. As reported here, the lockdown has provided a golden opportunity for people with a grudge to inflict police harassment on others , no questions asked.

And surely someone in such a senior position as a Chief Constable should make absolutely certain they are on firm ground before making public accusations of this kind against businesses. Somehow, though, I doubt whether a public apology will be forthcoming. This is only one of a long list of examples of police overreach during the lockdown, with their colleagues in Lancashire recently excelling themselves.

If we were ever to end up with something like the East German Stasi in this country, they would clearly have no problem recruiting officers – or informants.

Interestingly, the Shakespeare is a full entry on CAMRA’s National Inventory of Historic Pub Interiors, although from the description it sounds as though the original features have been rather garishly painted over, and it has a pretty down-market pub offer. I’ve driven past it a few times in the past, but never been tempted to venture inside.

We never have drink in the house

I recently ran a poll on Twitter asking whether people were drinking more or less during the lockdown, despite being unable to visit pubs. The results were mixed, but despite my readership probably containing a considerably higher proportion of regular pubgoers than the national average, a rather higher figure said they were drinking more as opposed to cutting down.

POLL: Compared with before the lockdown, how much alcohol are you drinking?

— Curmudgeon (@oldmudgie) April 11, 2020

On the other hand, over the past three weeks I’ve seen a number of people saying that, since the pubs have been closed, they have pretty much entirely stopped drinking. For them, the two things are inextricably bound up with each other, and if you take the surroundings of the pub away, drinking becomes a pretty pointless exercise. Now, that’s an entirely reasonable point of view, and I certainly wouldn’t criticise anyone for a minute for adopting it. However, it’s important to recognise just what an outlier it is in terms of general social attitudes.

Over the past sixty years, the UK has seen seen a steady increase in the proportion of alcohol sold through the off-trade in comparison with the on-trade. In the 1950s, the on-trade accounted for over 90% of sales, but it has now declined to only 31%. Beer in fact was the last market segment to make the switch, with the tipping point not happening until 2015. A major factor in this has been the growth in the market share of wine, which typically is not associated with pubs, and is rarely done well by them.

There are a wide range of reasons for this which I considered in this blogpost from eleven years ago. One of the key elements is changes to lifestyles, with homes having become much more pleasant, and families doing a much wider range of activities together in them. The archetypal symbol of this change is a family sharing a bottle of wine over a meal, something than would have been unknown in ordinary households in the 1960s. But it extends into many other areas, such as entertaining friends and family, holding barbecues and watching TV sport.

There was an obvious aspirational aspect to this a trend. Drinking wine with dinner was a marker of a middle-class household, as was having a cocktail cabinet. Certainly when I was a small child, my parents would never keep alcoholic drinks in the house except for the Christmas period, but that had changed by the time I reached the legal drinking age.

It was also a question of changing gender roles. The households where all drinking was done in the pub tended to be ones where it was overwhelmingly done by the husband, who might take his wife along to the pub on Saturday evening. But, with couples wanting to share roles and responsibilities and abandon such rigid demarcation, that became less and less acceptable. That, incidentally, was one of the reasons behind the decline of the traditional Sunday lunchtime session, because women were no longer happy to stay at home cooking the dinner while their menfolk were in the pub with their mates. Back in those days, too, the woman who drank at home was often viewed as someone to be pitied rather than an example of emancipation. “Has she been at the cooking sherry, then?”

There was also a moral aspect to this, with “we never have drink in the house” being seen as a statement of rectitude, even from people who drank a lot in the pub. You still sometimes hear CAMRA blokes say “I never drink at home” as though it is a good thing. Yet, as I argued here, the attitude that somehow drinking at home is inherently less worthy than drinking in the pub is old-fashioned, silly and divisive. Each can be good or bad depending on the context. And the people who say that either tend to be single men, or older married men whose children have flown the nest.

The persistence of this view means that many beer enthusiasts fail to appreciate the reality of how the vast majority of ordinary people approach the subject of drinking. Most adults in this country probably do not visit a pub or a bar to have a drink (as opposed to eating) from one month to the next. They have no inbuilt loyalty or affection towards pubs as a concept, and on many drinking occasions going to the pub is not even an option.

Mail disorder

I’ve seen a couple of messages on Twitter urging people to buy beer directly from breweries rather than from supermarkets during the lockdown. That’s all well and good, but it has to be recognised that it comes at a price. Beer is a heavy and bulky commodity, and shipping it around the country is expensive. That’s why, compared with clothing or books, mail order for beer has never really taken off outside a specialist niche. When many people will have been laid off from work and feeling the financial pinch, paying more for their beer will be the last thing on their mind. And businesses shouldn’t expect to be “supported” by the general public, unless they can provide a product people want to buy, at a price they’re happy to pay.

Having said that, I thought that, as I was saving money from not going out, I might take a look at what was available out there. I don’t want to buy beers I wouldn’t consider normally, or things that might turn out to be a pig in a poke, but I could see if I could find some beers from favourite breweries whose products we never see locally. So I looked at some that people had highlighted on social media, but quickly ran into the familiar problem of cost. While the headline prices may not have been that much above undiscounted prices in the local off-trade (although they always were higher), once you added on shipping costs, typically around the £8 mark, they became prohibitively so.

One twerp on Twitter predictably asked “how does that compare with prices in the pub?” but that really isn’t the point. A pub isn’t just a beer shop, it also offers atmosphere, hospitality and conviviality. The only valid comparison is with other off-trade prices, which are often only half as much for beers that may be a bit more familiar but, to be honest, are often of comparable quality. I looked at several breweries that all fell into the same category. And another problem is that the shipping cost is often not made explicit until very late in the process.

Another drawback is the time taken for delivery, so delayed gratification is inevitable. Plus you are subject to the notorious vagaries of couriers. Last year, I ordered a mixed case of ciders as a birthday treat. But I was out when it was delivered, so it was left with a newsagent in the town centre with no parking. Fortunately I was able to collect it by parking (legally) on double yellow lines, but that would have been of no use so someone who didn’t drive, or who wasn’t physically able to carry it fifty yards.

However, I did notice on Wadworth’s website that they were currently waiving delivery charges. So you can get a mixed case of twelve of their beers for £32, or £2.67 a bottle, which is still above shop prices, but not prohibitively so for something I like and never see locally. So I went for one of those, although it hasn’t arrived yet. You can also get twelve bottles of the 5.5% ABV Bishop’s Tipple for just £25, and, if that takes your fancy, 24 cans of 6X for just £38.50, or just £1.60 a can. The prices for Thatcher’s cider are also more reasonable – the main brands are available in supermarkets, but the “Cider Barn” specials aren’t.

If you’re happy to pay a substantial premium to get hold of beers that you can’t find in local shops, then that’s fair enough. Indeed I stated above that I just have. And, in the current situation, it may provide a lifeline for people for whom visiting shops is impossible or highly inconvenient. But, for reasons of cost and convenience, it has to be recognised that mail order beer is always going to remain a niche market.

And, unless you’re particularly snobby or fastidious, the range of beers that is now available in supermarkets and other off-trade outlets is such that most palates will find it at least adequate. For example, just confining it to British ales, my local branch of Home Bargains had stocks of Oakham JHB and Inferno, and Adnams’ Southwold Bitter, for £1.00 and £1.09 respectively, none of which you would sneeze at. And my local Morrisons stocks Cheshire Cat and Eastgate Ale from the Cheshire-based Weetwood Brewery for just £6 for 4.

And please don’t suggest that I should support a local business by getting a case of Tarquin Crudgington’s Bowel-Purger Railway Arch Murky IPA. If I didn’t fancy it before, I still don’t now.

Edit: The individual case prices for Hook Norton beers are pretty reasonable, but you need to add a whopping £9.50 on top of them for shipping. As with the Wadworth’s, I might have found a mixed case more tempting.

The cash machine stops

The coronavirus crisis has resulted in people being strongly encouraged to use contactless payments wherever possible to minimise the need for physical contact associated with using notes and coins. This has led to warnings that it is likely to accelerate the widely foretold death of cash, which may have largely vanished by the summer as people never return to using it. While obviously many people value the convenience of making payments by card, the elimination of cash raises serious issues for both the general functioning of society and for individual freedom, which I touched on a couple of years ago.

It is estimated that there are 1.6 million unbanked workers in the UK, and there must be many other non-workers who have no access to banking facilities. While there may be technological solutions that can address this issue, their interests cannot simply be breezily dismissed. Added to this, there are many people, not by any means entirely elderly, who have a strong preference for using cash and are uneasy about card payments, even though they may theoretically be available to them. Is it reasonable to ride roughshod over their wishes in the name of progress?

Over the past couple of years, there has been a growing trickle of pubs and bars deciding to go entirely cashless and stop accepting cash payments. This may be understandable if, as has happened in a few cases, the establishment has been the victim of multiple robberies. However, in most cases it is simply signalling that they want to be perceived as modern and forward-looking. It is essentially profoundly snobbish. It is in effect saying that they are not interested in the business, not only of people who have no access to card payments, but of those whose preference is to avoid them. They are putting up a sign that the poor, the old and the conservatively-minded are not welcome. Our friend Cooking Lager made a good point when he said:

I like cashless but not accepting cash is like advertising the gaff as a wankers' bar.

— Cooking Lager👁️ The #PubFromHomeMan (@CarpeZytha) October 16, 2018

One obvious issue is that going cashless creates a disconnect between people and money. It makes it harder for children to grasp the concept of money, if it is just numbers on a screen rather than something tangible in their hand. It also makes budgeting more difficult for adults, both in terms of limiting your spending on a night out, and also in a more general sense of managing your expenditure through the month. It’s hardly surprising that so many people seem to get into unmanageable debt when they hardly ever see the stuff.

When this concept was first mooted more than twenty years ago, what was proposed was “digital wallets” which could be topped up in the same way as a pay-as-you-go mobile phone. This would have helped to make it more manageable, but instead what has happened is that people end up using debit cards and having a multiplicity of transactions taken directly from their current accounts. I was always brought up to keep a separate record of banking transactions and reconcile this to the statement at the end of each month, but if there are dozens of cups of coffee and rounds of drinks on it, this becomes completely impractical.

I always used to find it useful to draw a distinction between significant items of expenditure that justified recording individually, and routine everyday spending that didn’t need to be identified in detail, and thus were appropriate to be paid for in cash. I knew that in a typical week I would spend £XXX or thereabouts, so that was what I would withdraw from the cash machine. Fortunately, a couple of years ago the practice of imposing credit card surcharges was outlawed, so from my point of view the most workable solution is to allocate one particular credit card to everyday contactless transactions, which I can then view the balance of online and pay it off in a single sum at the end of the month. But not everyone has the luxury of having a credit card.

Charities have reported a fall-off in donations, such as those received by bar-top collection boxes in pubs, due to the reduction in cash usage. Yes, of course you can make donations by card, but it’s a much more considered process and not remotely as spontaneous. Last year, I even saw a street beggar with a card reader, which just seems wrong. The absence of cash will also inhibit small, casual gifts and loans between friends and relatives. It will make such everyday activities as sharing out a restaurant bill, and carrying out a collection for a departing work colleague, much more formal and remove any element of anonymity. And it’s not hard to visualise people in situations such as abusive relationships wanting to build up a cash reserve that is hidden from scrutiny.

There are extensive areas of what might be called the black and grey economies that currently run on cash. Requiring all of this to operate by bank payments will obviously bring it out into the light and subject it to the scrutiny of the tax authorities. Some may see this as a good thing, but it may cause many informal or ad hoc economic activities to cease to happen entirely. And, if cash is unavailable, some form of alternative barter economy or unofficial currency may evolve to replace it.

A cashless society is dependent on connections to power and communications for every single transaction. However, the foundations of our modern technological society are more fragile than many imagine. While coronavirus has driven many to adopt cashless payments, it has also exposed our vulnerability to shocks of this kind. Many of us remember being subjected to power cuts in the 1970s, and in recent years the failure of successive governments to support the construction of new capacity has left our power generation system teetering on a knife-edge. Organised hacking attacks have sometimes brought large swathes of the Internet to a standstill, while some banks’ IT infrastructure has fallen over for days on end. In 1909, in his oddly prescient short story The Machine Stops, E. M. Forster described how a universal, interconnected, technological society could slowly but surely be brought to its knees if things stopped working.

There are also wider implications for civil liberties, which have been highlighted from both sides of the political spectrum. For example, this article in the Guardian says:

Engineering public consent for cashlessness is a subtle process. People may indeed enjoy a new payments app or contactless card, but financial institutions then use that to justify the gradual removal of the cash infrastructure – such as ATMS – in order to deliberately make cash harder to use. This feeds back, making digital seem relatively more convenient, “inspiring” more people to choose it.

While the free-market Mises Institute says:

Cash has been the target of the banking and financial elites for years. Now, the coronavirus pandemic is being used to frighten the masses into accepting a cashless society. That would mean the death of what’s left of our free society...

...Being bound to computers for transactions kicks the door wide open to hardcore surveillance of personal activity and location data. Being eternally on the grid means relentless taxation and negative interest rates, which the Federal Reserve is already gearing up for.

These concerns fall into two main areas. One is that people will be subject to constant surveillance of exactly where they have been and what they have spent their money on. It’s all too easy to say that the innocent have nothing to fear, but who can honestly say that they have never done anything that they would prefer not to be exposed to the light of day? And it isn’t difficult to imagine a range of scenarios where this information could be used to target or stigmatise people in various ways.

If all transactions are on the record, it also opens up many possibilities for being able to control people. For example, certain types of transactions could be blocked if they were felt to be undesirable, either for the individual or society as a whole. Businesses that were felt to be acting against the public interest could be prevented from accepting payments. And the entirety of your financial life would be potentially laid open to the grasping hand of the State, either through negative interest rates or outright confiscation.

Of course, these concerns may be dismissed by some as examples of the tinfoil hat mentality. But any student of history will know that the benevolence of those in authority is not something that can be guaranteed. And, if you lived today in Russia or China, would you be happy for the State to have such detailed oversight of your everyday activities? It’s ironic that some of those who, before Christmas, were ludicrously accusing Boris Johnson of wanting to erect some form of totalitarian state, are now amongst those who are the cheerleaders of a trend that contains such potential for making that outcome a reality.

Ultimately, the continued existence of cash represents a bulwark of freedom against both governments and corporations. Yes, many people may find contactless payments for everyday transactions convenient, but if we as a society allow cash to entirely disappear, we will have also said goodbye to a large measure of our liberties.

Small isn’t beautiful

The current lockdown means that we’re reduced to drinking at home, if at all. The closest equivalent to the pub pint, at least in terms of volume, is the familiar 500ml Premium Bottled Ale, which fits comfortably into a brim-measure pint glass. OK, it isn’t an Imperial pint, but you can’t really get pint bottles of ale (lager, for some reason, is often sold in pint cans), and even if you could they would actually come right up to the brim. In fact, the typical pub pint, at least in the North, is probably closer to 500ml than 568ml. The Samuel Smith’s bottled beers, which are 550ml, certainly give you more beer than you would normally get in the pub.

However, in recent years 500ml bottles have steadily been losing ground to the smaller 330ml bottles and cans. Just three weeks ago (although it seems more like three years) we had a presentation at our local CAMRA branch meetings from representatives of Robinson’s brewery, who confirmed that the smaller size was where the growth was, while the 500ml bottles were in decline.

In particular, these have been taken up enthusiastically by the burgeoning craft sector. You won’t really find anything presented as “craft” in a 500ml bottle. Part of the motivation is to differentiate themselves from what are perceived as old-fashioned “boring brown bitters”. Plus it can’t have escaped their notice that they can get away with charging virtually the same price for a third less beer.

One argument advanced for smaller bottles is that they give the beer less chance to warm up, which is perhaps valid for chilled lagers, but hardly applies to ales and stouts. And they also allow you to try more different beers for the same given volume. However, if all you want is *one beer* while you’re sitting back to watch yet another rerun of Inspector Morse, and are happy with something familiar and trusted, that’s irrelevant.

I can see the point of smaller bottles for especially strong beers, although where the cut-off point should be set is a moot point, and maybe for specialities that you wouldn’t want to drink in quantity. But, speaking personally, for normal quaffing beers they just aren’t enough, so I end up wanting two to feel that I’ve had a decent drink, which obviously means at the end of the day I have drunk more and spent a lot more. Obviously everyone’s free to choose whatever bottle size they prefer, but I really fail to see the attraction of the smaller ones. Fortunately, there’s still plenty of choice available in the larger and more pub-like size.

Turn it down!

The Morning Advertiser recently reported on a study showing that 80% of people had cut short a visit to a pub, restaurant or café because of excessive noise, with 75% saying they would eat out more if venues were quieter. This is a particular problem for the deaf or hard of hearing who, contrary to popular belief, do not generally live in a world of total silence, but often find it a real struggle to pick out sounds.

I have to say this chimes with my experience – it’s not at all uncommon to go into an unfamiliar pub at lunchtime or early evening and find yourself confronted with a wall of sound that makes it impossible to hold a conversation. The same can even happen with televisions, which can sometimes be turned up to a deafening volume. Bar staff often seem oblivious of the effect the noise level has for people actually out in the public areas.

Obviously not all pubs are the same, and there may be a justification for loud music in a late-night venue aiming to create a lively atmosphere. But, in the general run of pubs, there’s really no reason for it at all. Of course there is a place for music in pubs, but the whole point of background music is that it should be precisely that, rather than completely dominating proceedings.

This is really a separate issue from the type of music being played. Obviously everyone has their own preferences, and will generally be happy to hear their favourite genre being played at a somewhat higher volume than other people would be. But music being played in a pub with a broad appeal needs to avoid causing too much annoyance to any customers, and it has to be accepted that some genres such as hip-hop or thrash metal are likely be less generally tolerable than others. All too often, music is chosen for the benefit of the bar staff rather than the clientele.

I’m certainly not dogmatically opposed to music in pubs, but I do feel that the widespread view that a lack of music results in a lack of atmosphere is a mistaken one. And, if you really don’t want your eardrums assailed, in plenty of places you have the choice of going to a Wetherspoon’s or Sam Smith’s pub, who don’t play any at all.

This news item has been on my list to comment on for a couple of weeks, but obviously recent events have rather curtailed the flow of blogging. At the moment I’d happily endure any kind of racket for a decent pint of Bass! I have had some thoughts on how the coronavirus crisis is likely to affect the pub and brewing industries, but I really don’t feel it appropriate to comment on this until there is at least some sign of light at the end of the tunnel. And I very much stand by my comments in the final paragraph of my post on the subject from a couple of weeks ago.

A case of Corona

We are currently in the midst of a growing crisis caused by the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic, which is unprecedented during my lifetime and comparable in many ways to the “Spanish Flu” of 1918-20. It isn’t for me to comment on the wider aspects of this, although it hasn’t stopped half the members of Twitter and Facebook becoming armchair experts overnight.

However, something that is closer to home is the potential impact on the pub and brewing industry. Yesterday, the Prime Minister made an announcement in which he advised people to avoid pubs, clubs and similar social venues, although he did not seek to close them down. Again it is not for me to say whether this is the correct course of action.

But it was immediately criticised from various quarters for leaving the pub trade in limbo, in particular meaning that, in the absence of a specific instruction from government, pubs would not be able to claim against business interruption insurance if they had to close down. This was repeated in a rather hasty press release from CAMRA. It also seems a touch ironic for CAMRA to be actually calling for pubs to be closed down.

Again I am no expert in the field of insurance, but I have to say this immediately struck me as questionable, as pandemics surely fall into the same category of risks as war and nuclear contamination, which are potentially existential perils and thus impossible to insure against on a commercial basis. And indeed this was confirmed this morning by the Association of British Insurers, who I assume do know what they’re talking about.

So the suggestion that pub owners would be better off if the government did force them to close is essentially fake news. Clearly there is a good case for government assistance for this, and other, industries that are suffering from the effects of the virus. But, as long as a pub can continue to trade and make a marginal profit, it makes financial sense to stay open. If, on the other hand, they judge that it isn’t worthwhile, then that decision must be respected.

Our four local family brewers – Holt’s, Hyde’s, Lees and Robinson’s – have all announced this morning that for the time being they are aiming to keep at least their managed pubs open. Robinson’s, for example, said:

Robinsons are keeping their managed houses open, and for the rest of their estate have agreed an immediate four-week rent-free period for all licensees with suspension of loan payments and interest charges where applicable.

I don’t consider myself to be at elevated risk of either transmitting or contracting the disease, and I will certainly continue to go to pubs for as long as I can. If I couldn’t, it would deprive me of a substantial source of social interaction.

If the government did instruct all pubs and bars to close, it would represent a massive escalation of the level of lockdown, and to be even-handed it would surely have to be extended to all other on-premises catering businesses such as restaurants and cafés. There would then inevitably be dog-in-the-manger calls for the prohibition to be extended to what might be seen as competing businesses such as takeaways and sandwich shops. This may have to happen in the coming weeks, but that kind of restriction of everyday life, while manageable in a short-term emergency, would prove difficult to sustain over a prolonged period and would inevitably lead to potentially explosive social tensions.

A capital day out - Part 2

We pick up the story of our Proper Day Out in Burton-on-Trent, the capital of British brewing, having just left the Burton Bridge Inn and heading across the Trent Bridge. Originally built in 1864 and widened in 1926, this is a very long bridge spanning two channels of the river and the intervening flood plain, where there was still some standing water. The amount of rain over the previous few weeks was shown by the powerful flow of water over a shallow semicircular weir.

The south-eastern end of the bridge is dominated by Swan House, which was formerly a pub. Here we turned right and followed Stapenhill Road, which runs parallel to the river and climbs a small hill alongside the cemetery, to reach the Elms Inn. This Victorian pub with its striking Bass lettering stands in an elevated and surprisingly rural-seeming position, although trees block the view of the river. I was able to take advantage of a brief gap in the busy traffic to take the photo below.

At the front there are three small traditional rooms around the bar, with a more modern extended lounge area to the rear. The central corridor boasts a stone-flagged floor. It was now mid-afternoon, and there were a fair number of customers of mixed age groups. On the bar were Bass, Pedigree, Taylor’s Landlord and Brains Reverend James. The early arrivals were greeted with rather so-so Bass, but they may have then changed the barrel, as those of us who got there a little later found it fine. The person who generally prefers the paler, hoppier beers decided to try the Reverend James as he had never had it before, even though I did warn him it was distinctly dark brown and malty. And so it was, but it was pretty good.

From here, some of us chose to save time by getting a taxi back into the town centre, and the lengthy journey along the southern part of Stapenhill Road and across the newer St Peter’s Bridge reinforced the wisdom of this decision. Our next port of call was the Dog on Lichfield Street, a pub that has gone through various incarnations, including a spell as an O’Neill’s, but has more recently been acquired by Black Country Ales and turned back into more of a traditional pub.

It has their typical high-quality refurbishment, with a variety of comfortable areas rambling around the central bar, but also their characteristic extended beer range, with no less than eleven cask ales being advertised. These included their own house beers together with Bass (of course), and a variety of guests, most notably cask Worthington White Shield. This was pretty good, although I wasn’t sure how it compared with the bottle-conditioned version. Our hop-lover was satisfied with Salopian Safe Room, which was described as a “piney citrus IPA”.

There followed a ten-minute walk through the back streets skirting the town centre to reach the Coopers Tavern on Cross Street, a renowned classic pub that I had somehow never managed to visit previously. It was originally the unofficial Bass brewery tap, but was owned for a number of years by Hardys & Hansons before recently passing into the hands of Shropshire-based Joules.

It has a superb unspoilt interior that earns it a full entry on CAMRA’s National Inventory. Pride of place goes to the tap room at the rear, where you can sit on a bench in the same room where the beer is actually dispensed from casks on a stillage, although a short bar counter has been added as part of recent renovations. Further forward from this are a number of other small, characterful rooms with real fires, and there is a more modern extension right at the back. There was, however, some discussion as to how original it was - go in with a fresh pair of eyes, and you would be hugely impressed, but those who remembered it from how it was before maybe felt that some character had been lost.

The beer range comprised the standard Joules beers, Bass and one or two guests including the potent Elland 1872 Porter, on a mixture of handpumps and serving directly from the cask. This was the only gravity-dispensed Bass of the day and, while you would not expect it to have the creamy head of a pint pulled through a handpump, the general feeling was that, while pleasant enough, it was somewhat lacking in condition even by the standards you would expect of beer on gravity. Still a memorable pub, however, where you could happily while away many hours.

We then returned to Station Street and our starting point, passing the Devonshire Arms to reach our final destination, the Roebuck, a street-corner pub with a distinctive curved frontage. It was originally the Ind Coope brewery tap and was the scene of the launch of Ind Coope Burton Ale in 1976. It has now been opened out into a one-room interior, with the bar along the left-hand side, comfortable bench seating around the walls and plenty of dark wood in the decor. It’s one of those places that seems to have a lot of floor space in relation to the amount of seating, and initially all the seats were taken, but after about five minutes a group left leaving a table free.

The beer range was mainly comprised of familiar brews such as Bass, Pedigree, Summer Lightning and Old Peculier, and all those tried were pretty good. Peter Allen, after a day on the cask, eventually couldn’t resist the temptation and succumbed to a pint of Burton’s biggest-selling product, Carling. We were joined by the elusive Life After Football, who was impressed by how coherent the conversation was at such a late stage in the day. It comes from long years of practice, we told him. Fittingly for his former career, the urinals in the gents’ were fitted with little plastic goalposts where you could steer the ball into the goal with an appropriately directed jet!

From here, it was only a short walk back to the station for trains home. I was pleasantly surprised to find my service to Sheffield operated by a High Speed Train, which are a vanishing species nowadays, but continue to provide a superior passenger environment to pretty much all their successors. So ended another excellent day out, with a very high standard of beer, pubs and conversation, and the added bonus of meeting two long-term Internet correspondents face-to-face for the first time. Given the current worrying news about coronavirus, it remains up in the air as to when the next one is likely to be. Burton is a very rewarding place for the lover of pubs and beer, although it does involve a good bit of walking, and there were several worthwhile pubs that there simply wasn’t time to reach.

Paul Bailey has also written a detailed account of the day here and here.

Thanks to Peter Allen of Pubs Then and Now for the photos of the Coopers Tavern and Roebuck. It should be pointed out that these were taken in the morning, not at the time we visited these pubs when the light was fading The one of the Roebuck, however, is shot directly against the sun.

A capital day out - Part 1

No, not that kind of capital, Burton-on-Trent, the capital of British brewing. I went to Burton a couple of times in the 1980s, once to visit what was then the Bass Museum, but hadn’t been there for over thirty years, so it seemed a good choice for the latest Beer and Pubs Forum Proper Day Out on Friday 6 March. It also offered the opportunity of a rehearsal for National Bass Day on Saturday 11 April.

Burton grew dramatically in the 19th century due to the expansion of the brewing industry, attracted by its high-quality hard water rich in gypsum. At one point, the town was responsible for a quarter of all beer produced in Britain. It became a County Borough in 1901, but in fact did not grow significantly after that, and by the time of local government reorganisation in 1974 was the second smallest County Borough in the country after Canterbury. Today, given the decline of brewing, it gives the impression of being like a man who has lost weight and is now too small for his clothes, being rather like Bradford in that respect. I remember from my previous visits that it had an unusually sprawling and dispersed layout, with the town hall and parish church situated on the north-west side of the station, three-quarters of a mile from the main shopping centre.

This meant that the pubs we wanted to visit were widely spread out, and some of the distances between them were a bit excessive for those with a limited amount of time to spend there. This gave rise to some debate on the forum about the itinerary, but eventually we arrived at a compromise which allowed those with more appetite for walking to follow a different route to call in a couple of the more far-flung ones. This prompted me to discover a website which enables you to calculate the walking distance and time between a pair of postcodes, which will prove useful in planning these trips in the future. It doesn’t give any indication of hills you might encounter, though, which was certainly a issue in Preston, but was unlikely to affect us in Burton, which is largely flat.

The day dawned bright and cold, a sharp contrast with the almost constant rain we had endured during the previous few weeks. The trip gave me another opportunity to take advantage of the savings available from the Senior Railcard that I acquired the previous year. On the scenic route through the Peak District between Stockport and Sheffield I noticed some snow still lying on the hilltops in the Vale of Edale. South of Sheffield, any flooding appeared to have receded, although the river levels still looked pretty high.

You are met at Burton Station by an impressive former Midland Railway grain warehouse, presumably once associated with brewing, but now converted into a Travelodge. The first pub was the Devonshire Arms, which is just a few minutes’ walk from the station. Like most of the other Burton pubs apart from Wetherspoon’s, this doesn’t open until 12 noon, and my photo shows a group of us sitting waiting outside for the door to be unbolted. It also shows what a bright, sunny day it had turned out to be. This, along with several other pubs, does not open until teatime earlier in the week, making Friday the earliest day when such a trip is feasible.

The Devonshire is a four-square, free-standing pub set back from the road and having something of the air of a “country pub in the town”. Inside it has a plain public bar at the front with bench seating down two sides, where our group slowly trickled in over the next half-hour, and a more spacious, rambling lounge at the rear. I met Ian Thurman aka thewickingman, with whom I had corresponded extensively via the Internet, for the first time. We were rapidly joined by another group of customers who we were advised were the local vicar and his family.

For a while, it had been a Burton Bridge tied house, and it still had a variety of their beers including Bridge Bitter and Stairway to Heaven, alongside Bass, which is the biggest seller, and guests such as Dark Star APA and Gates Burton Ale. Most of us went for the Bass, which was in excellent form, although our rather BBB-phobic member preferred the APA. This, for me, was both the beer and pub of the day, although there were plenty more delights to come.

From here, there was a split in the party, with some choosing to head for the Derby Inn, while others went straight to the Brewery Tap, which was the planned lunch venue. While the Derby, which is the nearest pub to Burton Albion’s ground, sounded an excellent pub, it was judged just too far in terms of both distance and walking time. The route to the Brewery Tap passed between a number of brewery buildings and conditioning tanks which dominate this part of the town. We noted that a pipe bridge spanning Station Street that had previously connected two sets of the Bass brewery premises had recently been removed.

Approaching the Brewery Tap along Guild Street, there is a preserved set of Burton Union casks with the steel trough to collect the fobbing beer running along the top. At the end of the street is the impressive former Magistrates’ Court, built, in 1909-10 in the Baroque style. The Brewery Tap is the bar attached to what is now the National Brewery Centre but was originally the Bass Museum, although time didn’t permit us taking a look around. It’s a pleasant but functional modern bar, and had quite a few customers in, who mostly seemed to be taking advantage of the food.

It has an extensive and fairly good-value menu, with most of us taking advantage of a combination of light bites and sandwiches. I got an impressive portion of whitebait for a mere £3.50, and the fish finger sandwiches, which were actually proper fish goujons, also went down well. We considered ourselves decently fed in a town that seems short on pub food options. We were less impressed by a soundtrack that seemed tailored for a much younger age group than most of the customers, including Ariana Grande and what sounded like an entire album from Scouting for Girls.

On the bar were a selection of beers brewed at their own pilot brewery, including Masterpiece, St Modwen and a recreation of Charrington IPA, plus the almost inevitable Bass and Cotleigh Snowy. The Charrington IPA was very good, although distinctly more hoppy than I remember it in the South-East in the early 1980s. Those who had detoured to the Derby Inn eventually caught up with us here.

A fairly short walk down Horninglow Street brought us to the Burton Bridge Inn, just short of the Old Bridge across the Trent. This is the home of Burton Bridge Brewery, and is a three-storey Georgian building with the entrance down the passageway to the right. Inside it has a rambling and surprisingly spacious interior around the central bar, with a public bar and adjacent room at the front and an extensive lounge to the rear. The brewery is at the back, and we were told there is a skittle alley on the first floor. Friday afternoon in a wet-led pub is hardly going to be the busiest time of the week, but we were the only people in apart from one other customer who left shortly after we arrived. Hopefully we didn’t drive him away!

There was a wide range of their own beers, including Bridge Bitter, Golden Delicious, Hearty Ale, Porter, Old Expensive and their own take on Burton Ale. With fond memories of the original Ind Coope Burton Ale, I tried the Burton Bridge version, but unfortunately it was rather woody-tasting and past its best. The other beers that were sampled were better, but none were particularly outstanding. The brewery is apparently up for sale, which explains why they have been disposing of their small chain of pubs, including the Devonshire Arms which we had visited earlier.

To be continued...

(Thanks to Paul Bailey for the photo of the Burton Bridge Inn)

Running with Tigger

There has been a considerable amount of outrage this week over the decision by the Portman Group to uphold a complaint against the packaging design of Lost & Grounded Running With Sceptres, which features a parade of cartoon animals. While it does not have the power to prevent the packaging being used, it can recommend that retailers do not stock it, which will obviously severely limit its distribution.

There are plenty of reasons to be critical of the Portman Group – its judgments often seem censorious and heavy-handed, it can act on no more than a simple flimsy complaint, which may have come from someone involved in the public health lobby, and it offers no appeals process. However, it’s important to remember, as Martyn Cornell points out in this blogpost, that it was set up as a voluntary body with the specific objective of staving off the possibility of statutory regulation of alcohol promotion and marketing. Some people may naively imagine that a statutory regulator may offer a more benign regime, but that is very hard to imagine, and in reality it is much more likely to result in much more severe restriction.

So: if you don’t want state regulation of the advertising and marketing of alcohol, don’t give the wowsers reasons to complain by using cartoon images on your cans and bottles that would not look out of place in the children’s section of a bookshop. And if you feel that restricts your artistic liberty, I really don’t have any sympathy: I’d rather see cartoon teddies and tigers banned from beer bottles than a Norwegian-style total prohibition on any sort of advertising or marketing.

Sometimes it may need to act in a firm manner to make it clear to the watching world that it is doing its job. And is defending figures reminiscent of children’s cartoon characters really the hill you want to die on when standing up for the rights of alcohol producers? It can’t be denied that the cartoon tiger looks very much like Tigger out of the Winnie the Pooh books. And alcohol is an adult product – why should anyone even want to use imagery that can all too easily be interpreted as appealing to children? Whether in practice it will do isn’t really the issue.

The charge has been levied against the Portman Group that, considering it is funded by large brewers and drinks producers, it discriminates against small and innovative brewers. However, surely it is simply the case that the large firms have a better awareness of the regime they are operating under and are naturally risk-averse. If small brewers fall foul of the code, it is more likely due to naivety about the nature of the regulatory environment, or indeed in some cases deliberately tweaking its tail for the publicity value, although I’m not suggesting that applies here.

It’s hard to escape the conclusion that, at least to some extent, craft brewers believe that they are operating on a higher moral plane than the mass-market producers and can thus push the boundaries further. You can’t really imagine George the Bear being brought back to advertise Hofmeister. And this sudden anger against the anti-drink tendency seems very selective and limited in scope – how many of those who are complaining about this have spoken out against much more serious manifestations of the trend such as minimum pricing, which was introduced in Wales only last week? At root, it’s really more concerned with getting at “big beer” than confronting the anti-drink lobby.

If you look into it, the ruling against Oranjeboom 8.5% is actually much more worrying. It is revisiting a packaging design than had already been approved a couple of years previously, and seeking to micromanage the size and positioning of text conveying purely factual information. That is surely much more concerning than objecting to cartoon tigers. Apparently the producers were already going to withdraw this product from the British market, but the precedent has been set. One day this will come back to bite the craft brewers - who have been known to put very strong beers in large containers - on the backside.

Chairs, chairs, everywhere...

...but not a place to sit. I concluded my recent blogpost about the pleasures of solo pub visits with “It also must be said that there are many – probably too many – pubs where the general layout, atmosphere and offer make enjoying that solitary pint well-nigh impossible.” And, all too often, I now find myself going into pubs, looking round, and deciding that, even though there’s plenty of seating, there’s nowhere I actually fancy sitting.

The photo above is taken from this newspaper article about Sam Smith’s Crow’s Nest pub in Cleethorpes. It was built in 1957, and has probably been little changed since then. It shows the lounge, with a pattern of seating that, a generation ago, was very typical of many pub interiors, with continuous fixed wall benches and relatively small, round-cornered tables.

I have discussed the merits of bench seating in the past – it is comfortable, with upholstered seats and backs; it is sociable, facing into the centre of the room rather than just at your companions; it is flexible, so you can spread out your coats and bags, or squeeze together to allow more people in; and it is consistent, so it is the same in each spot in the pub. It is the quintessential type of pub seating.

However, in more recent years benches have increasingly been replaced by other forms of seating. First are the dreaded posing tables, which to my mind are extremely awkward and uncomfortable, and create a division with anyone at a lower level. If I went in a pub and saw nowhere to sit but posing tables, I would go elsewhere. In a bizarre move, one fairly traditional pub not too far from me has recently replaced half the seating in what was a very pleasant and well-appointed lounge with posing tables. No, I don’t understand it either.

Then there is the introduction of much larger tables, that may be suitable for eight or ten. These dominate the interior and, compared with smaller ones make solo drinkers or groups of two or three feel out-of-place. They also make the usage of the space less flexible. My local pub had a fairly respectful refurbishment a few years ago, but it would greatly benefit from overlarge tables being replaced with twice as many smaller ones.

In contrast, other pubs feature regimented rows of small rectangular tables for two or four, with bare wood dining chairs, which produces an atmosphere more akin to a French bistro than a cosy pub. This is a particular favourite of Wetherspoon’s. You go in Wetherspoon’s in the morning, and see a fair number of the tables occupied by one solitary bloke with his newspaper and plastic carrier bag. Put them on benches facing into the middle of a room, and they’d be much more likely to talk to each other, as indeed they do in certain other pubs.

Then you get squishy sofas, which place you at the wrong angle for drinking, make a very inefficient use of space, and put you at a lower level than other customers. And don’t get me started on industrial-chic craft bars where you’re expected to sit on what is basically a plank!

While all of these forms of interior design may have their fans and their merits, to my eye all are much inferior to wall benches. Introducing a variety of them in the same space produces an awkward, unsettled interior, and means that if your favourite type is occupied you may have to put up with something you don’t care for.

Bench seating is always a positive in pubs, but it is possible to produce an appealing interior without it. A key factor is to have comfortable chairs with upholstered seats and backs, like those in the picture of the Crow’s Nest, rather than spindly bare wood ones or backless stools. And the chairs should be arranged so that half of them have their backs against the wall and face outwards into the room, rather than facing tables arranged at right-angles to the wall. Tables should be relatively small, ideally no more than four-seaters, and encourage a more sociable and pubby feeling if they are round or oval rather than rectangular. You can also move around them to get closer together or further apart. The round, three-legged Britannia table, shown at the right, is the pub classic – and, of course, three-legged tables don’t rock on uneven floors.

Speaking personally, if I don’t feel “at home” in a pub, I will be deterred from returning, no matter how good the beer is. Obviously, all the above is basically subjective personal opinion, but I think I’ve spent enough time in pubs to have a good idea of what works in promoting social interaction, and what makes people feel awkward and ill-at-ease.