A Few Notes on Aspects of Drinking in the United Kingdom
Or, I think it’s your round, mate!
When I was seventeen my father took a sabbatical in the UK and I ended up living in a very charming little town on the Thames, only six miles south of Oxford, called Abingdon. At the time it had the highest number of pubs per capita of any town in Britain, or so I was told. Most of them were Morlands as the brewery was located there. Now, Morlands is not a particularly great beer. (my lawyers told me I could say that) although latterly they have produced a very good ale called Old Speckled Hen.
Morlands offered only two choices of beer that I can recall, mild and bitter. Mild has less hops in it than bitter, hence the differentiation. As an aside, as it is historically and culturally relevant, beer was brewed in the South of England and Ale in the North of England. Beer traditionally has hops added to it for flavor. Ale did not because it was not possible to grow hops north of a certain latitude. Also, hops spoil easily and so could not be transported very far and were thus unavailable to Northern brewers before modern times. As a result, there is both a cultural and a social distinction to be made between ale and beer as well as that of taste. It’s yet another reason for Northerners in England to have a chip on their shoulder about their softer, more pampered cousins to the south.
However, whether it be ale or beer to the English this beverage is integral to their sense of things being right in the world. It also conveys a sense of sturdy prosperity and is an antidote for alcoholic dissolution as Hogarth so brilliantly conveyed in his prints. Of course, this is another striking example of the lack of self-knowledge so prevalent in England as getting drunk on beer does not constitute alcoholic dissolution in their minds. It’s just something every healthy young lad, middle aged man or pensioner does. However, to give them their due they do not have as many euphemisms for vomiting that the Australians do so they must be more moderate in their drinking. Nonetheless they do drink beer in quantities that will lay flat the average American who is unused to the ritualized drinking that is obligatory in England to define and solidify male camaraderie.
Since I was only 17 and the enforcement of age limits on drinking in England was non-existent it was only natural that the first thing that I did on my first evening in Abingdon was to head to the pub. There, for the reasonable sum of 17 New Pence I purchased a pint of Morlands mild. I can’t say it was good. It was certainly a shock. For a start, it wasn’t carbonated. The immediate reaction of any American to English beer is that it has gone flat and is off. I’ve come to like it over time, no doubt in part as a result of plenty of ritualized drinking. Since it is not carbonated you can drink more of it. I tried the bitter next. It was better than the mild, which I never had again.
English pubs run the gamut from the charming rusticity of a 15th-Century converted farmhouse to the grim minimalism of those contained in the former mill towns of the North before yuppie urban redevelopers got their hands on them. Britain now has chains of identikit pubs which are no longer differentiated by region, class or style.
At the time (1972), pubs in England were only open from 11am to 3pm and from 6pm till 11pm except for Sundays when the hours were 7pm to 10.30pm. As an American, I initially found this baffling, until I discovered the licensing laws were a product of history.
These hours had been introduced during the First World War in an attempt to curtail the drinking of the workers in the munitions factories. I can only assume that it didn’t really succeed as there is in fact no way to curtail or limit the alcohol consumption of the average Briton save by unconsciousness. The result of these pub opening hours meant that there was a certain pace to drinking which generally averaged about one pint every fifteen minutes. The beer is generally a bit weaker in England than America running at around 4.3% alcohol per volume as opposed to the 6% I was used to (I did not grow up in a pisswater 3.2% State, which is of course responsible for the famous joke. Why is drinking (name the offending brand) like making love in canoe? Because it’s as close to fucking water as you can get).
The danger in the British beers (and ales) doesn’t lie in their strength but in their volume. First off, the British still use the old imperial pint which is 20 oz as opposed to the 16 oz pint in America. We used to use the imperial pint in America until the Whiskey Rebellion of 1791–1794. The change to the smaller pint was an attempt to avoid (a certain level) of tax. Oh, how things have changed. Now we just fork the money over and let our Representatives delight in squandering it in a bewildering variety of ways.
So that means that four British beers are a US cup more than a US six pack. I used to drink up to about five pints a night maximum before I reached my limit. I was considered a lightweight by many.
A key aspect of pub drinking is buying a round. This is mandatory. Americans are often unaware of this — and may end up coming across as rude, or even worse, given the way the British interpret these kinds of social actions, clueless. Everyone is expected to buy a round for everyone else. Failing to do so is a major social sin. Group drinking in America takes different forms such as providing a keg, or some other large quantity of alcohol, which everyone shares. American bars tend often to be grim and dreary places filled with solitary alcoholics drinking at their own pace.
This communal drinking pattern in Britain also applies to cigarettes. If you are in a group of smokers and you have cigarettes it is obligatory to offer one to everyone else when you light up. This is known (inappropriately to American ears) as flashing a fag. I have seen Brits absolutely non-plussed at American smokers who take out a cigarette, light up and put the pack away. It just isn’t done in Britain. Britain is absolutely chock-a-block with unwritten rules that everyone learns and knows! These rules vary somewhat from class to class and from region to region, but everyone in Britain knows what the rules are and what is done and what is not done, and failing to flash your mates a fag or buy a round when it is your turn is simply not done.
For the British, alcohol is used as a major social lubricant and this is true of all social classes. One of the aspects of British drinking that still astounds me is the pleasure they take in being falling down drunk — and the more smartly dressed the stooge the better. The Brits think that getting totally pissed in a tuxedo is the funniest thing in the world!
That the British have a different attitude to drinking is unquestionable. A well known American actor once checked himself into rehab after a three-day drinking binge. To the British this kind of behavior is merely risible. To them a three-day drinking binge is called a Bank Holiday Weekend.
If you think that consuming large quantities of alcohol is confined to the men you are sorely mistaken. British women are keen participants in this national sport. Though they tend to drink beverages that are less fattening than beer. Most sex — and certainly all casual sex — in Britain requires significant quantities of alcohol as a pre-condition.
There is no question that attitudes towards the consumption of alcohol are vastly different between the US and the UK.
For example, the following satirical article recently appeared in an English journal. Many Americans will no doubt be appalled by this, having been brain-washed since youth by Puritans and the Women’s Christian Temperance Union about the perils of demon drink. The English know better. Northerners even more so.
OUR CHILDREN CAN’T HOLD THEIR BOOZE, ADMIT NORTHERNERS
PARENTS in the North say they are ‘deeply shamed’ after new figures revealed their children are lightweights, unable to handle a proper session.
New government figures show record numbers of Northern youngsters being admitted to hospital with ‘alcohol-related illness’, after consuming as little as four pints of weak, effervescent Australian lager.
Lancashire parent, Tom Logan, said: ‘Kids these days don’t have the commitment or discipline to handle session drinking. They throw up at the drop of a hat, and worse still they often crawl off to bed after being sick rather than just carrying on as if nothing’s happened, like you’re supposed to.
‘Parents are responsible for teaching their children how to drink, and that means leading by example even if you end up losing your job and have to sell all your chairs to Cash Converters.
Drinking consultant Emma Bradford suggested that one possible solution could lie in ‘twinning’ the under-14s with a borderline alcoholic scaffolder or travelling marquee erector at least twice their age.
She said: ‘Placing children under the mentorship of an itinerant manual worker, ideally a burly male with a neck tattoo and at least one deeply bitter divorce behind him, creates a great context for experiencing heavy drinking and also a keen sense of how shit the world is.
‘I also recommend starting reluctant young drinkers on shorts rather than beer, as spirits offer a higher alcohol content per volume, ideal for smaller stomachs.’
Stephen Malley, 13, from Leeds, said: ‘There’s a lot of pressure from friends to study diligently and spend weekends playing cricket or going orienteering, like some fucking poof.
‘Personally, I’d rather go out Friday and wake-up Sunday in a skip. I guess you just have to be strong-willed.’
