On the dry for Lent now, but still pining for pints in the pub
Lockdowns have replaced lock-ins, yet the thought of savouring ‘the usual’ at the bar keeps us going, writes Liam Collins
‘IT’S going to be very boring,” said a friend when I announced I was giving up the drink last November. “It’s boring already,” I replied. With pubs shuttered and social events cancelled, there were no welcome distractions to lead me astray, so it wasn’t really a problem and I sailed through.
“Dry January?” asked the wife after I had welcomed 2021 a little too vigorously.
No thanks, I said. I had all this leftover booze I got on the cheap with the aid of supermarket vouchers, which are now invalid, so she went ahead on her own and I’ve been working my way through the old stock.
With Lent looming on Wednesday, I’m faced with a new dilemma.
We’re a funny lot, the way we have to use a quasi-religious excuse to “give up the drink” for a given period. November is for the Holy Souls, and Lent, well, it’s just Lent. Yet despite our secular society, it’s as if some of us still need a belt of the crosier when it comes to alcohol.
Reading an old interview with late businessman Gerry McGuinness brought home to me how Irish people intellectualise alcohol use and abuse as much as politics or religion.
“I adore wine and I drink nothing else, but two days a week I drink nothing but water,” McGuinness told Ivor Kenny, back around 1990.
“Tony O’Reilly gives up the drink for January, Mike Smurfit gives up drink for November, Jim Stafford would stop drinking for Lent and so on. January is 31 days, November is 30 days — I give up drink for 104 days. But if somebody said to me you can’t drink a glass of wine or champagne for three-and-a-half months, you’d cut your throat.
“Two days a week is much easier and it does your system a lot of good because it’s not a question of keeping off it entirely and then heaving it back in.”
I usually divide my drinking companions into two camps: those who give it up for Lent (the majority) and those who give it up for November (minority). Sorry, there’s a third group: those who don’t give it up at all, or the really deluded who drink cider on the basis that it’s not a real drink.
Over the years, I’ve persuaded a few friends to try the dry November, even for the sake of the liver, never mind the all-round improvement a little bit of abstinence brings to body and soul. I call them the “Never agains” because, when I broach the subject of abstinence the following year, I’m met with a definitive “Never again”.
Most drinkers, when they give it up for Lent or November, can’t really stand the company of other drinkers. First, you have to get over the “Ah, go on, have one for Jaysus’s sake”. When you’ve scorned that, you get more or less excluded from the company, even when you’re the one hanging around to drive them home.
People talk about the “Irish goodbye”, when you slip away from the company of drinkers without saying farewell. Of course, the reverse is that you thought you were the life and soul of the party, but they don’t even notice when you slink quietly into the night.
Back in the day when I worked as a barman, I discovered there was a whole series of hierarchies when it came to the drinking classes, such as the sub-groups who drank in the pub or those who drank at home. The surprising part was that lads who could sink a fair number of pints five or six nights a week never kept any drink in the house. It was like a badge of honour — if they weren’t sitting on a bar stool, they weren’t drinking.
Those distinctions began to blur after the smoking ban and drink-driving legislation. Having pals around for a couple of cans became a thing. It was the gangs of women on
a girl’s night who began to colonise the pubs — the more luxurious ones, of course.
Long before we all stopped going to the office, the “couple of pints” on a Friday evening was dying a slow death. With pubs closed for nearly a year, the big question now is: is the pub a thing of the past?
Tradition and habit play a big part in all the rituals we observe. Many publicans knew their takings would drop during Lent, but they also knew that come Easter Sunday the regulars would be beating down the door and the turnover would take off again.
Now there are no certainties. Apart from the fear factor, habits change in a year.
Some of us just won’t bother with it anymore. You don’t see €50 disappear behind the bar — and by the time you pay the taxi home and the babysitter, there’s another €50 gone. A quick visit to the offlicence for a nice bottle of wine and a few beers and you’ll be home and hosed for €30.
Still, I can’t wait to get back inside a real pub in the late evening as darkness is closing in. A fire is crackling nicely on the grate and a few friends are seated around one end of the bar and you can hear the laughter when you open the door. The barman nods. “The usual?” he asks, already pouring a pint.
Dream on.