Airport dawn liquor

At airports, whole families of well-nourished holidaymakers are a familiar sight tucking into a good cooked breakfast accompanied by a pint or two of lager. It is not (by and large) that they follow this pattern of consumption at home; breakfast boozing is for them a sign the holiday has begun. Now a three-cornered fight has broken out between airlines like Ryanair, which want to sell drink on board (in regulated measures, they insist), airports, which want to keep 24-hour terrestrial alcohol sales, and anti-alcohol groups. But drink is, after all, available on demand at most holiday spots. If the temptation to get blotto at the airport is too much for some, they’ll hardly draw a sober breath abroad, and end up in some vile oubliette, with a hangover but without habeas corpus. The airport breakfast test might be thought a useful filter.