As Tom Ewing puts it here, the reason he be lovin’ a particular Girls Aloud track. Well I am sorry Tom, but just like the madness of kicking one of MY BLOGS off of FreakyTrigger, there is no such thing as Binge Drink Britain. Where are the rivers of vomit, the above eyebrow cuts that can only come from a curbside catastrophe? All-Day-Drinking? WHERE?
A case in point: Saturday night, wandering out of The Transporter 2 at 11:30. Let’s go get a drink, says I, as we can in BINGE DRINK BRITAIN. We are in the WEST END. There are more pubs that there are sixteen year old girls on the street who have told their Mum they are staying over at their mates. But can we get in any.
First stop: The Porcupine. Looks a bit full. Of people coming out.
Then a swing around our old friend The Polar Bear. There is a club going on downstairs (this bodes well I hope) but the upstairs pub has one solitary barmaid using the special spray on the tables. So off we go to De Hems. It is still open, but much in the same way as a crowded Tube carriage can theoretically take one more body if you use your elbows tactically.
And then the most depressing five minutes of my life ensued. Namely walking around pub triangle to find them all either closed or kicking out: Coach & Horse, Spice Of Life, Molly Moggs, The Three Greyhounds, the Golden Lion. When someone rashly mentioned the Wetherspoon hell-hole Montague Pyke we were almost tempted (it was shut anyway). Pillars Of Hercules was the last place surveyed.
Put it like this, from a survey of Binge Drink Soho: the Spanish Bar still has a few years of life left in it. There is only one thing worse than pubs closing early due to a rubbish law. That is pubs closing early OUT OF CHOICE.