The trouble with outdoors-only pubs will be the British weather

Iwas dusting down my goat-horn headpiece for the Summer Solstice when I learnt there were two events to celebrate. It now looks likely that pubs will reopen in late June, just as everyone’s wincing at how long the longest day actually is when you can’t nip down the boozer. But it seems post-covid pubs will come with conditions: chiefly that you can’t go inside but have to huddle in the beer garden, not breathing on other people. Which wouldn’t feel like a hardship had the sun not disappeared.

Few want to support British inns more than I do – after all, my parents ran one for 34 years – but I just can’t get psyched up about sitting outside in wellies while my pint brims with rain. True, we’re told establishments can now erect marquees for 56 days a year, rather than the previous 28 – but it’s still a bit like sitting out in a giant plastic poncho.

What government strategists are overlooking with their new rules and regs is that pubs were pretty much invented as safe havens from our filthy weather. A cold lager on a hot day is a tonic, but a pint and whisky chaser by a blazing fire on a cold one feels life-saving – a truth I was reminded of this time last June when old school friends and I set out to walk the South Downs Way.

Just like 2020, the weather was balmy in May. Then, a day into our walk, the Met Office issued an amber weather warning for the South East which, I was cheered to learn, meant “a danger to life due to unexpected flooding”.

Our crew of eight middle-aged women in shorts and sun-dresses hiked straight into a biblical cloudburst. If we hadn’t been able to take refuge inside the Village Inn, near Petersfield, we’d have abandoned the whole venture. Radiators were covered with socks, jumpers and trainers and soup was ordered. At every stage of our four-day rain-a-thon a different pub offered salvation.

Nor is this unusual. My parents’ rural pub had two log fires and they were often required for British Summer Time. Small wonder: the main reason we visit inns is because they guarantee more cheer than our own front rooms. But if they’re required by the coronapolice to become punter unfriendly, why open at all?

The truth is, most of us have already spent enough time outside engaged in furtive, distanced boozing. I’ve dubbed it “the summer we all turned 16 again”, as the small-scale, twilight gatherings in front gardens, fields and public parks reminded me of the pre-pub, late pubescent years. There’s the familiar sensation of feeling grown-up but exiled, unable to drive, chilled to the bone, hysterical from boredom, with only a bottle of sherry nicked from the larder as compensation. And yes, there have been glorious moments – but now I’m ready to be 52 again.

If the Government wants to give the hospitality trade a fighting chance of recovery there’s got to be some leeway for bars to ensure they’re alluring and punters to accept some personal risk. The young, and those like me who believe they’ve had the virus, will be bolder than others.

Imagining that one directive suits all is a recipe for disaster. Many urban pubs don’t have gardens or much pavement space. A country inn on a quiet weekday will be less busy and Covidy than your average Tesco. So let’s polish our tankards – and pray the Cavaliers head this policy, rather than the Puritans.