There’s been a little bit of a fuss round here recently
about pubs, or rather a pub. I say ‘round here’, it’s actually been in the next
borough along. As Robert Elms once said, ‘There’s no decent pubs in Tottenham”.
It was true back when he and Sade lived in a squat on the High Road and used a
bucket as a lavatory, and it’s truer still today when there are not only no
decent pubs in Tottenham, there are hardly any pubs full stop.
One borough along, a pub’s got into a bit of a ruckus because
a couple took their young child along one afternoon, and then complained that
other patrons were using a certain level of bad language within earshot. The
pub manager’s response was immediate and direct; he banned children from the
premises.
There have been objections raised that banning children
prevents parents from enjoying a social afternoon with their friends. It
doesn’t. It just prevents them from doing so in that particular pub. There are
other pubs, child-friendly pubs that smile benevolently on small children, pubs
may have a menu that offers kiddie meals, pubs with tables covered in paper
tablecloths that can be drawn on using crayons that the pub happily hands out.
But even these do not disguise the fact that if you take your children to the
pub, you are a lousy parent. Yes you are. This is why.
Pubs – I’ll say this slowly (though you can read at
whichever speed you wish) – are adult places. They are places where adults
meet. This is made obvious by the facts that generally, only adults are allowed
to enter them unaccompanied by another adult, and that their primary purpose is
to sell a product whose sale is proscribed to those who are not adults. That
product’s primary effect is to lower inhibitions; put the two together and you
get adult people, who have adult vocabularies, becoming relaxed enough among
other adult people that they begin to use adult language (and we may argue here
about what constitutes ‘adult’ language but you know very well I mean swearing
rather than obscurant polysyllabics). If you take a child to a pub it will hear
swearing. If you leave a child in the middle of a busy road it will be hit by a
car. If you dip a child in golden syrup it will be licked by passing dogs.
Cause and effect. Simple as that.
As a sidebar here, let me just mention that a while ago I
ran into, and arranged to have lunch with, somebody I’d not seen in twenty-five
years. When we initially sat down, we were both consciously trying to behave
like the grown-up, cultured, civilised people we wished to be seen as by the
other, and as such we spoke in polite, grown-up terms. You know what these
things are like, though; somebody drops a ‘blummin’, that’s followed by a
‘blimey’, and within about half an hour there’s f-words flying around like no
tomorrow. If that happens at lunchtime in a coffee-house-stroke-bakery in
Crouch End on nothing stronger than decaf and Eggs Benedict in the company of
someone with whom you intend to be urbane, what on earth do you think it’s
going to be like halfway through a session on the Krony with the loud, sweary
mates you last saw four days ago?
Besides, what the hell are you doing in a pub with a child?
What’s the nature of your activity there? Are you yourself having a drink? If
you are – even if you’re only having one measly little glass of red, not even a
proper sized one, just one of the little thimble-y glasses - then your children
should be confiscated, because you are not a fit parent. Fit parents do not
drink when they are in charge of their children, and they rarely drink even
when they’re not in charge of their children, and do you know why that is? It’s
because children cannot look after themselves, and after even the smallest
amount of alcohol, neither can you. They need you to do it for them, and they
need to you to do this every hour of every day for at least ten to twelve
years. Probably longer. Children are fragile. They break easily. They need you,
their parent, to look after them as though you were Mary Poppins and Superman
and one of those plate-spinning fellas you used to get on Saturday evening
variety shows all rolled into one, and if you don’t remember plate-spinners
what the hell are you doing having children at your age anyway and you can’t be
all those things, things that you really need to be, if you’re even the tiniest
bit below your best.
Even if you’re not drinking alcohol yourself, everybody else
in the pub is, unless it’s full of people as effortlessly joyless as you seem
to be. You’re in a place full of people who are quite probably losing control
of themselves, even if it’s happening slowly, even if they don’t mean to. They
might not have the reaction time that they should. They might stumble. They may
be holding bottles and glasses and maybe knives and forks which, innocently or
otherwise, could cause a great deal of damage in an accident, an accident which
is far more likely to happen when there’s alcohol involved than not. You want
to bring your children into that environment so that you can have a nice social
afternoon? Frankly, you’re a dick.
Another thing: I’m all in favour of teaching children to be
aware of alcohol. I think there’s a great deal to be said for the French way of
slowly introducing children to dilute wine with meals; it’s better than having
them discover Strongbow in the park with their mates (one of Sondheim’s
lesser-known works). But we don’t do that here. Not in public houses. Do it at
home by all means. But, as mentioned earlier, we only allow public sale of
alcohol to minors under certain conditions. Only with meals, only of certain
products, only with adults. The reason for that is simple; we don’t want to see
twelve-year-olds off their face on Stella. Drunk adults are ugly enough, but
there’s absolutely nothing good about a drunken child. Alright, there’s quite a
lot that’s funny about them, I’ll give you that, but after you’ve had that
initial bellylaugh and start to think about the adverse consequences on the
child’s mental and physical well-being, let alone the social conditions that
led it to drinking high-alcohol lager, well, things get pretty serious pretty
quickly.
Most importantly, if you complain about swearing in front of
your child in a pub, I have to ask: who the hell do you think you are? What
gives you the right to demand that I behave in a certain way in a space that is
by its nature intended for adults? You don’t want little Florence to hear bad
words? Cover her ears. If it’s warm out, take her out into the beer garden
where she can run about and play and where she’s less likely to hear this
terrible terrible corruption that spews like bile from the filthy men’s mouths.
Better still, take her out of the pub altogether. Take her
to a café. Take her to a soft play area. Take her anywhere you like but take
her somewhere entirely different from where I am, because I am in an adult
space paying adult money for adult pleasures and my enjoyment of those
pleasures should not be reduced because you don’t want your child to hear a
selection of syllables that you find offensive on their behalf.
Here’s what it boils down to: You had the child, you take
the responsibility for it. It’s not up to me to do that, because I am not its
parent. I’m not a monster and I won’t knowingly allow your child to come to any
harm; in fact if I see any possibility of that I’ll do my best to prevent it,
but I’m not going to do your job for you.
It’s your kid, and if it’s in a situation you disapprove of it’s your
responsibility to remove the child from that situation. In return, I promise to
keep to my end of the social compact and will not sit in a nursery school
classroom holding a pint of Adnams and calling the Chancellor a cunt.
Ah, now look. You made me do a swear.
