I'll Drink To That

So, Hazel Blears thinks we Brits will never enjoy the so-called "continental cafe" culture of drinking responsibly.

She's damn right, of course.

Firstly because, as she says, we have an Anglo-Saxon heritage of alcohol-fuelled marauding that we have to live down to. There's no way we'll ever give up our ancient birthrights of a pint of bitter or a yard of ale for some frosty, metricated, European nonsense, is there?

Well, perhaps not, and this brings me to my second point: we won't and in fact, can't, drink in a European way because there aren't any continental-style cafes in the whole of the UK. Not one.

In most European countries if you want a glass of beer or a cup of coffee, you go to a cafe. You sit at a table, a waiter takes your order and you feel sophisticated, n'est-ce pas? You probably have a freshly made pastry to go with your drink. You can even get beer in McDonalds.

In Britain if you want a glass of beer, you go to a pub; if you want a cup of tea, you go to a tea room; and never the twain shall meet. (If you want a cup of coffee, you go to France - what else are cheap flights for?)

The pub is always dark and dingy, and you have to stand at the bar for 10 minutes while they change the barrel before you spill your pint all over yourself trying to carry it to a table wedged under the loudest speaker this side of the Tannoy factory. The tearoom is full in equal numbers of elderly women keeping warm and children screaming in prams and buggies. You suspect the fiver you paid for a pot of Earl Grey and a scone might not have been worth it.

If this gap in the UK's licensing laws were closed - so that normal cafes with their sofas and newspapers (e.g. Starbucks, Costa etc) could sell normal drinks (e.g. beer, wine, Irish coffee), might it not normalise the consumption of alcohol in the UK?

People drink to get drunk because that's the only way most pubs are bearable these days and nowhere else offers a place to have a quiet, relaxing half.

Just a thought.

Footnote: It's interesting that this interview is published on the daddy of all drinking days in the calendar. I'll be celebrating my Viking roots in the traditional manner tonight, with much whisky and carousing. If I survive, I'll see you all in 2007.

Happy New Year!