It should have come as no surprise that The Great Quarantine of 2020 has shown life at its best and worst. Whilst we applaud the heroism of front line care workers and essential service providers, we also have to suffer the manic hoarding of the panicked or entitled, the mendacity of elected officials, and a smorgasbord of craziness from nutjobs of all sorts – e.g. the ones burning down telecommunication masts because ‘5G spreads the virus’. (This last a modern equivalent of flagellation as a prophylactic against The Black Death.)
These are difficult times to negotiate without recourse to a stiff drink or two. Our favourite bars are shuttered and silent, their ‘bottly glitter’ dulled, the pumps covered as if they were dead. At least we can still buy liquor to drink at home. But the role of drink in a crisis is bound to be controversial. Last week, The Independent ran an opinion piece that argued for the closing of off-licences during the pandemic. The article, by Ian Hamilton, a lecturer in mental health at the University of York, advocated a ‘Dry Covid’ and was as well-intentioned as it was naïve. The Independent tweeted the column …
The Independent@independentOpinion: Let’s try “Dry Covid” – lockdown is the time to kick our national alcohol habit for good
… and the response from the twitterati speaks for itself. Here are a few of the many, many replies (with the great Irvine Welsh leading the charge):
Irvine Welsh @IrvineWelsh
Get fucked you dozy cunts
Tom Lynch @BahnstormerTom
Fuck right off.
Kind regards,
Everyone
Stephen Graham @PlopGazetteOpinion: Let’s try fucking off.
Ruth Mitchell @BeerFaerie
I think I speak for a lot of people when I say “Fuck Off”.
Ciara McShane @Ciara87C
Absolutely fucking not.
Jim Cognito @JimCognito2016
We’re suffering enough – piss off
That last tweet hits it dead on. Far be it for me to deny the deleterious effects of drink, but this is no time for piety: things are hard enough as they are. (Two days after the ‘Dry Covid’ piece, The Independent published a trenchant column by Chris Owen that thoughtfully but thoroughly rebutted Mr. Hamilton’s remarks.) Reaching for historical parallels to help us through this difficult time, the default position is invariably World War 2. Philip Ziegler’s admirable London at War 1939-45 has some detail on Londoners’ wartime drinking habits. The government realised early on that it was effectively impossible for them to close pubs, that would have been a deprivation too far. West End pubs did a great trade from the ‘Phoney War’ onwards, oases of conviviality in the blacked-out streets. (Rather hauntingly, the descriptions of wartime pubs recall Charles ‘Boz’ Dickens’s 1835 report on a gin palace in St.Giles, contrasting the darkness and filth of the surrounding streets with the ‘dazzling’ light and life of the bar’s interior.) But getting hold of booze was another matter: it was very hard to find whisky or gin, and fraudulent substitutes were occasionally served by unscrupulous barmen: war-time accounts of methyl poisoning read a little like tales of absinthe poisoning or, nearer our own time, incautious trips on LSD.
During a pub crawl with Dylan Thomas in the summer of 1943 the novelist Julian Maclaren Ross (whom I would nominate as patron saint for all London drinkers, we’ll meet him again another time) was relieved to discover that the Café Royal was still serving Irish whisky at a time when scotch was totally unobtainable. Beer was easier to come by but was generally weaker than it had been before the war and often ran out before closing time. Even glasses were in short supply, and pubs might ask patrons to bring their own. But despite this, pubs remained venues for social interaction, offering comradeship and temporary escape from conditions that post-war generations can barely imagine. But comparisons with the war end there. As some exasperated wag put it, in response to an older person’s reminiscence of not letting the war interfere with day-to-day living, ‘But you can’t catch the Blitz’. Any pub is a potential Petri dish for Covid19 and thus we are denied the pleasure of public drinking for the foreseeable future. I asked a friend on Facebook earlier today if she had any photos of pub interiors and she replied ‘In my dreams!’ She speaks for all of us who miss the simple joy of enjoying a drink in agreeable company – or even disagreeable company, if it comes to it. But we’re still free to drink at home and, for all the concomitant risks, it is impossible to underestimate the morale-boosting function of booze. My father served as a bombardier in WW2, seeing action in some of the most arduous theatres of the Mediterranean conflict, and he remembered with uncharacteristic solemnity the unexpected appearance of a rum ration: that’s when they knew they were in for a tough one. But a man in his regiment won the Victoria Cross for taking out a German gun emplacement single-handed, a feat achieved when he was comprehensively pissed (he was upset because a friend had been killed by a German sniper’s bullet). So courage mon brave! Drink responsibly, as the health warnings have it, no gin-scented tears please, but go ahead and drink. Your livers will save the nation. Chin chin!
