Todays media headlines keep reminding us that the pubs have opened up their doors again in merry England and they are eager to welcome all those thirsty punters gagging for a beer after three and a half months of lockdown, despite having been able to nip down to the local Tescos., Sainsburys or whatever to buy any alcohol they may have wished for, at vastly cheaper than pub prices. Failing to have been able to go and shop for it, it could have been delivered to the door in a variety of ways., it has been freely and readily available to purchase. Alcohol sales have surged during the corona lockdown, in March sales were up by 30%.
There are a whole bunch of reasons that I can think of why I won’t be first in line outside the door of a pub waiting to spend my paltry dosh on a pint or ten, and not only because I might be a grumpy old git. Its fair to say I have spent a fair amount of my time inside Honest Millers, Black Horses, Bears, Lions, Stags, Unicorns, Oaks, assorted Arms’s , English, Scottish, Welsh and Irish pubs (in lots of strange places), as well as in perhaps less salubrious but massively entertaining venues like the Bantu Juu in Mpulungu and Chez Ntemba in Kalemie. I positively do understand the good crack you can have supping a few drinks with a bunch of people in a pub or bar.
The whole nation seems to have been drawing and painting rainbows which are on view wherever you seem to look. A nationwide clap for the NHS and key workers has taken place on Thursday evenings. This has been to praise and recognise the importance of their work. To go out and get literally trollied at the first opportunity when pubs have opened would be a sign of total contempt to the under-staffed, under-funded and tired members of the NHS who have been working tirelessly, along with a varied army of other members of the key workforce. If the pub doors were open to all these people and the rest of us actually demonstrated a degree of restraint and even paid for their drinks it would mean something quite special and show that we really did appreciate their work on all our behalves.
The next reason I won’t be going is because I live in Wales and the pubs won’t be opening here. From the beginning of the pandemic The Welsh Government has grasped the scale of the problem more quickly, it has acted more assertively and it has issued much clearer and simpler guidance and rules. In short. the leadership has actually demonstrated that they might be capable of leading. They have respected the importance and value of human life and appear to have actually listened and heeded the public health. medical and scientific advice.
Today is the 4th July which just happens to be American Independence day. I am pretty sure that this little fact has not escaped the attention of our mop-headed Prime Minister who reminds me of the Milky Bar kid and have us believe that he is “tough and strong and just can’t go wrong”. Opening the pubs on a Saturday night to get shitfaced during a pandemic does not seem like the smartest of moves. I am not American and can find very few good reasons of any kind to be more closely aligned to them, not forgetting that the beer that they make in all liklihood has less appeal than a bladderful of my dog’s piss with a bottle of Thirsty Ferret inside it.
Finally and most conclusively I won’t be getting legless in any pub anytime in the near or more distant future because I am permanently legless and have been so for more than 500 weeks . Staying on your legs is the best way to remain for as long as you possibly can. Life in a wheelchair presents numerous challenges and whilst you come to look at life from a different perspective, I could never wholeheartedly argue that two legs to move around on are not the better option..
So what I will be doing as for many of the past Saturdays over the last ten years, I will be carrying out my little weekend ritual and opening up a bottle of wine whilst rooted to the spot in my chair to share my time with well-grounded and well-rooted individuals, in the form of plants. Apparently a certain lockdown defying special adviser in 10 Downing Street with poor eyesight has got 100 million quid to look for technical solutions to suck carbon dioxide out of the air.
He really should have looked at the cyanobacteria and multicellular photosynthetic eukaryotes who have been doing this for the past one billion years in freshwater communities, or perhaps the communities of complex, multicellular photosynthesizing organisms that have existed on land from around 850 million years ago, or even all the other vast variety of plants that have evolved since then. They are very good at it and all at precisely no cost.
That is why I am more than happy sitting here watching the plants whilst having a quiet drink from the fruits of a vine. I truly hope the people in the NHS, the police, the publicans and their staff and all the other services manage to get through the weekend and will have the time to relax and enjoy a drink. Pub or no bloody pub.
