Everyday Drinking_ The Distilled Kingsley Amis - Kingsley Amis [74]
Last month I asked for readers’ views of my complaints about present-day pubs. Today I present the first half of my report. The response wasn’t overwhelming exactly, but it was a good deal larger than I’d expected, also more favourable. Only one reader, by her own account a hotelier and Tory activist who’s also been a probation officer, took serious issue with me. “Your writing,” she stated, “is getting more and more biased and entrenched in reactionary fuddy-duddyism.” An excellent summing-up, I thought, of my contribution to the eighties’ cultural scene.
To those many in broad agreement with me, the most de-E tested feature of the modern pub was clearly noise, whether in the form of music or row from machines or both. The general and strong feeling was that noise was destroying or had already destroyed “the conversation and conviviality that has made the British pub the envy of the world,” to quote a lady from Cumbria, not in my view overstating the case. Of course, it’s the youngsters, many said. Affluent yobbos is what a reactionary fuddy-duddy might call them.
Food was next on the hate list, for getting morally and physically in the way, for using up staff time that should be spent serving drinks, above all for raising unwanted cooking smells, a point I’d overlooked. Certainly if you’re not eating or going to eat, you don’t need great clouds of vapour from chips or curry under your nose. The eaters on their side could do without cigarette smoke at equally short range. The case for returning to a two-room system in pubs seems strong, if not to segregate eaters then to install a yobbos’ beargarden or a crèche. Children underfoot displeased a third of those writing. Minor aversions included nasty decor, necking teenagers, TV and unobliging staff, but on the whole staff came off pretty well.
At some point like now, I have to reveal what will come as no great surprise, that the average age of my correspondents was, well, on the high side—though one sterling lad of twenty from North Wales reassured me that I wasn’t out of touch. There have to be changes, we’re told. But do we know that? I wish I felt that at any rate the public were getting what they want, instead of what some “expert” thinks they want. Brewers please note.
I was struck, and now and then greatly touched, by the pleasant, friendly tone nearly everybody took. Even the fuddy-duddy charge came in such a good-natured letter that I couldn’t possibly resent it.
Second half of report will quote quotes, name names and announce the winner. Oh yes, there’s a winner, and a prize. Guess what sort.
“Let’s go back to the spit and sawdust and start again.” So says Mr. E. Quested of Peacehaven, neatly summing up the view of many who kindly wrote to me in answer to my call for readers’ reactions to present-day pubs. A lot of them would also agree with Mr. R. P. Taylor, of Leamington Spa, who mentions “one certain sign of a good pub . . . at least as many old people use it as young.”
I was greatly taken with a suggestion from Mr. C. S. Lowther, of Blaydon—the forming of a club to fight juke boxes, etc., Peace in Pubs (PIP). “A lapel badge or tie could be sold to finance printed attacks on the offending breweries,” he writes.
Not impossible. I have dreams of an organization of pub-users that would emulate that dazzling success of CAMRA, the Campaign for Real Ale, which forced the brewers into an about-turn. But this one’s unlikely. I don’t think there’s enough strong feeling on the subject. As we see all too often, hordes of people just put up with the noise and the intrusive food and the kids underfoot. At least they, the hordes, have somewhere to go, unlike poor Miss or Mrs. M.