Why home is as good as the pub ... virtually

MOST people drink at home now. There’s less chance of getting arrested or married, and the facilities are all nearby so you don’t have to pee through someone’s letterbox on the way home.

You can also measure out your drinks so that you can actually taste them and don’t have to get up every 30 seconds for a refill. In our local, the drams are so tiny that just inhaling the aroma of your whisky drains the glass.

However, during the current crisis (and, for once, the word is merited), folk have been pining for the pub. So much so that they’re creating “virtual pubs” where they can talk to their mates about the football, make several marriage proposals, and sing like a lintie to the despair of all others present.

The influential Daily Star newspaper called it “off your facetime”, and quoted expert opinion that home drinking will rise from 60 million pints a week to 100m during the pubs shutdown. Newspaper pictures show empty shelves in supermarket drinks aisles, and proclaim that booze is the new bog roll.

Naturally, as someone whose normal modus operandi is social isolation (such a lot of fuss about nothing), I won’t be joining any virtual pubs. I’m not even sure how the phenomenon works. Something to do with video-conferencing via apps on your portable telephones. Such a lot of nonsense.

But I will own that the pub is a central part of British life. In its convivial sense, it used to be the case that this applied more to England, where there’s always been more of a lad culture, but where women also could enjoy themselves within reason.

Scottish pubs in the old days, by contrast, were pale and dour places. They were places of shame and guilt, disreputable establishments for the fallen – solitary, troubled souls who stared morosely at the gantry for hours on end, lamenting lost loves and life in general.

I think that’s changed recently, and English friends often comment on how how “lively” they find Scottish pubs. They’re full of craic. We’ve all become a little bit more Irish in that sense, and that’s no bad thing.

But, even so, the pub is rarely what it’s craicked up to be. There’s no rollicking piano in the corner. If you go in on your own, no one will speak to you. If you try speaking to a lady nowadays, she will alert the constabulary and have you arrested for hate speech.

At least in your own house, you can say what you like. Or, failing that, you can just stare at the bottle, lamenting lost loves and life in general.

Rural racket

HERE’S an odd thing you learn only through experience. If seeking peace and quiet, you’re better off in a city tenement or block of flats than in the country.

I know this doesn’t hold if the Earthlings in surrounding flats are noisy and inconsiderate which, I admit, is pretty much the norm. But, ignoring that devastating flaw in my argument, I’m teasing out a truth here, something based on reality and not the world as you’d imagined it.

Life in a village isn’t much different from a city suburb. In both cases, it’s a rare day when there isn’t someone nearby hammering, drilling or re-enacting the Battle of the Somme with weaponry from B&Q’s arms depot.

If you’ve a country road nearby that leads to nowhere and nothing, you’ll know the traffic on it never stops. Where it’s going and why is anybody’s guess. And that’s before you come to farmers – industrialisers of the country – and their various infernal machines.

Compare and contrast with a nice quiet flat in the city. With no gardens, sheds, DIY workshops or farms nearby, you’ve no local loci for racket. You may even live furth of traffic. What bliss.

PG Wodehouse has his witless urban characters frequently bemoaning countryside racket. But, writing before the age of electronic DIY equipment and horticultural artillery, he was referring mainly to birdsong, which I adore. In the garden, I’m uneasy when, for some reason, there’s none.

Birdsong isn’t at the same psyche-destroying pitch as DIY ordnance. Neither is it rhythmic. I swear if you presented an Earthling with a hammer and no nails he’d just rhythmically hit something, anything, nearby. It’s how rock ’n’ roll started.

Older readers might remember how, desperate to flee the Earthlings’ racket, I relocated to a remote part of a remote place. Hardly had I unpacked my things than salmon farmers pitched up on the beach in front of the house and started rhythmically hammering on their cages.

Silence: so difficult to find. It’s just a mercy that, in normal times at least, country folk are able to visit the city and find a botanic garden or park for some respite.

Five things we learned this week

1 The original 1967 Jungle Book was voted most nostalgic Disney movie of all time. Always loved Bagheera’s wise words: “Had I known how deeply I was to be involved, I would’ve obeyed my first instinct and walked away.”

2 Despite having small brains compared to other birds and even humans, pigeons survive in cities by producing lots of eggs, according to new research. That’s why they’re always at it, billing and cooing, and chasing each other aboot. They’re disgraceful.

3 Top model Caprice Bourret, 48, keeps herself youthful by getting into a “big freezer” and standing there for three minutes a day. No wonder she always seems chilled. Be a cold day in hell before we try something similar.

4 A warm bath on the other hand can reduce the risk of heart disease and stroke, according to a Japanese study. Apparently, one side-effect is that it also gets you clean. Never thought of that. Might give it a go.

5 Turns out that saying you know something like the back of your hand indicates your ignorance. Scientists say our brains struggle to perceive the back of the h. accurately. Next: how a bird in the hand is only worth one in the bush.