A Saturday night out in Newcastle

If you have a look at Allison Pearson's excellent column in last Wednesday's Telegraph you'll see she quotes 'Russell' and the plight of his octogenarian parents. Well that's me, and my parents! (Allison was so sweet, she sent my folks a copy of her latest book too.) And rules be damned, I'm visiting them this weekend in Newcastle (although actually I’m pretty sure I’m not breaking them, but who knows these days?).

On Saturday I had an evening out at a pub with a friend in Killingworth in north Newcastle. Pleasant enough, pretty busy, wore my exempt lanyard and no problems or questions whatsoever. We had to do our bit - research by Wisteria Accountants has revealed that North East Pubs Could Lose £2M EVERY WEEK during the local lockdown.

There were clearly tables where there were people from more than one household, which I’m pretty sure is against local rules. And I also suspect that several locals celebrating some of Newcastle United’s three goals tonight were breaking the rules on decibel levels... 

The one definite silver lining of the new regulations is table service. That’s rather good - I could see it becoming a permanent feature in many pubs.


But best of all was the landlord, forced to kick us out at 10pm sharp. He bellowed: "I f**kin hate it, but yous all gotta gan hame because of that f**kin arsehole Boris.” Hah. Think the hospitality vote may have slipped away, Mr Johnson... Also, I hadn't actually realised, but everyone has to be out by !0pm, and they actually start calling last orders at 9.15. So this isn't taking away an hour's business from publicans who would have normally shut at 11, it's closer to an hour and a half.


I wasn't around when the first drink-driving laws were introduced but I'd like to have think I'd have supported them, because there was verifiable evidence that drink-driving killed many innocent people. And I was definitely in favour of the smoking ban in July 2007 because, again, there was proper scientific evidence that passive smoking was very bad for you - and it just made such an unpleasant environment for non-smokers. But there is NO good evidence that this 10pm curfew is of any benefit to the health of the nation, probably the reverse.


In taxi on the way home - neither of us with masks on - the driver and I bonded over "they're wrecking the economy / why don't they let us get on with our lives / this vaccine might never come and if it does it might create a whole load of new problems" etc.


Encouraging stuff from the north east. The rebellion is slowly growing...


Comments

  1. UnknownOctober 5, 2020 at 10:51 AM

    Very encouraging. Let's hope the rebellion grows. Mass civil disobedience is called for.

    ReplyDelete

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