The Art of Sipping
TUESDAY: Lunch is a sandwich with Edam and Olive Tapenade -- and I'm referring to the ingredients, not the next-door neighbours. My stomach has been burning for the past week so I'm taking it easy today and saving a much richer Camembert sandwich for tomorrow. My fruit includes fresh nectarine, raspberries, and a new fruit to me, sharon fruit, which is a type of persimmon. My local greengrocer described it as tasting like a cross between a grape and a pear. It's very orange, sweet, and juicy, even suggesting papaya, and it looks really nice with the nectarine orange and the raspberry red.
I've just read another complaint about extended licensing hours, and it reminded me that I've been meaning to talk about this for some time. The erroneous assumption on the part of the British establishment is that longer opening hours for pubs, which has gradually come into effect over the years, is responsible for increasing the binge drinking problems in this country. Like toasted crumpets without Marmite that is so illogical, and I've just got to explain why.
When I grew up in California, no bar or shop could sell alcohol between the hours of 2:00am and 6:00am. What this meant was that between the hours of 6:00am and 2:00am one could find some sort of bar somewhere where one could buy a drink. A hardcore alcoholic could head off to the pub at 6 in the morning and stay there all day into the wee hours of the morning drinking themselves into oblivion. But how many drinkers are that extreme? The average person would simply know that they were free to meet friends for a champagne brunch, or for a sandwich and beer at lunch, or perhaps for a mid-afternoon drink, or they could stop after work for a cocktail, or stop for a glass of wine before or after an evening event, or they could even stop off for a beer after working a graveyard shift. There was no urgent rush to get down t'pub by noon or by 7:00pm, because the pub was nearly always open.
The same basic opening hours apply in Seattle and Washington State as well as many other states. In New York and Illinois bars don't have to close until 4:00am, and in the city of New Orleans and the state of Nevada bars can stay open all the time if they like. But in America does one see more stumbling drunks with black eyes puking on the pavement with their knickers around their ankles than they do in Britain? The simple answer is no.
So why is this? Well, I've got my own theory.
When I first moved to the UK I brought with me the habit of sipping my pints leisurely while my British mates would throw theirs down their necks as if there was a monetary prize for the fastest drinker. Wanting to fit into the culture I gradually learned to up my speed, especially when having a session in a pub that closed in the afternoon. Whereas it was natural for me to fit in no more than 2 pints between the 12:00 opening and the 2:30-3:00 closing, I often felt pressured to hurry up in order to keep level with my companions. And during the evening, when pubs stopped serving at 11:00 but allowed another half hour to drink up, I was forever amazed to see the instant queue of customers at the bar the moment time was called, and quite a number of them would order more than one drink for themselves with the intention of guzzling it all in a record time of 30 minutes.
By 2005, when the latest extended licensing hours came into effect, many more pubs were already open all afternoon. Currently, if their applications are successful, pubs can open at noon and stay open until midnight or 1:00am or even later. But the fact that one's local is now open for 12 continuous hours every day hasn't really changed the habit of getting as many down as you can while you can. It's like a dog wolfing its food even though it knows it's the only pet in the household and it has the entire day to dine.
So this is what causes the binge-drinking culture. It has nothing to do with how long a pub can be open -- it's young people who've learned the art of wolfing their beer, often from their own parents. There's already the Slow Food movement, so I think it's about time Britain started a Slow Pint movement. So how about it, CAMRA?
