Learning our lesson

By the time I reached legal drinking age the six o’clock swill was just a memory, but ten o’clock closing and no Sunday trading were a facts of life. So it is that my strongest memory of late teens and early twenties pub life is of the post nine pm Saturday night panic, to stock up for the dry day coming. The time, and bottle shop conditions, were constantly monitored by us on this night when it was vital to have something to do and fuel with which to do it. From nine o’clock on Bottle Shops, part of the pub, there were no independents back then, were the most popular and crowded parts of any pub and pity help those who arrived a 9:50 on a bumper evening to find the sort of crowd that these days you might expect to see for the release of the latest X-Box, though not as orderly.

It’s Saturday night for god’s sake and at Nine PM, instead of setting out for the night as our European cousins might, we were panicking as our core social center, the only one with a government license to purvey fermented liquor, is one hour away from closing. Not just for the night but for the next 36 hours. By the time it re opens the weekend will be over and you will have dragged your sorry ass back to work for another grinding week. Is it any wonder that under such conditions people got confused about their requirements and over compensated, not unlike people threatened by war-time-rationing. “A slab of VB tinnies please” (they were actually steel cans, far more deserving of this title than their aluminum descendants) “No hold on Andy is down this weekend make it two” Hmm, last time he was down his cousin was to, man she’s hot. “Give us a bottle of Vodka too, and I better have a bottle of that Riesling stuff” This was a rationale played out much more often than I’m ever going to be able to convince you.

That it happened is our disgrace, mine, the AHA’s and the NSW Governments. Once all this alcohol was purchased what do you think happened. There’s a point at which drinking becomes irrational. Even if Andy and his hot cousin didn’t show this alcohol needed drinking. Yes we went on to drink at least three times what we would have, had we known as our European and Asian cousins did, that if we wanted it a drink was always available, often from the local grocer. I’m not sure that there weren’t other parts of the world were conditions were as bad as this but I am sure that if there were, then culturally they should have been described, as I would describe us, as Barbarians.

Innocent as I then was I took my publican at his word when he said “sorry mate, it’s the law” little realizing that it was his law. It’s fascinating to reflect that in those days (and little has changed) publicans thrived with little in way of marketing, supported instead by their governments restrictions which made pub attendance a right of passage that guaranteed an ever growing market. What can you do when you turn 18? Go to the pub. What a fabulous marketing ploy and it costs peanuts. I thought my publican wanted longer trading hours in which to do business from which he would obviously profit. Not till much later, did I realize that he was very happy with the status quo. He sold two to three times as much product as he would have staying open without having to pay all those extra wages. A win win situation that left him with plenty of time to stand upright in church on Sunday proud of his handsome contribution to the plate.


For those of you, having finished the paper and the crossword, and with little else to do, who would like to view more of this rant you now can. Just go to http://rokstump.blogspot.com
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The philosopher