Laura Craik is UPFRONT about bagging a booking and sartorial Stockholm syndrome

Laura Craik snags a pub garden hot spot, attempts to throw off her Covid loungewear and looks forward to a tweakment volte-face

“Sitting in a LOCAL BEER garden felt as exciting as if LARRY Levan had risen from the dead to PLAY an all-nighter at SPACE”

Here in week three of The Great Reopening, I think we can all agree that we are Mary and Joseph, and there is no room at the inn. Sure, the inn itself is empty, and will remain so until 17 May. Outside the inn? Forget it. You can’t get a booking in a beer garden, rooftop or terrace until January 2023. Which leaves you with two options: accept that 4.30pm invitation for ‘evening drinks’, or go back to the shitting park with a carry-out.

Clearly, all anyone wants to do is go out and get mindlessly drunk with their friends, but this can be challenging when your table, chair and touch points need thoroughly disinfecting in time for Katie Smug’s party of six arriving at 8.45pm. Splitting the evening into two shifts so that everyone gets a chance to pour beer down their throats while summarily eating a grass-fed beef patty topped with cave-aged Gruyère on a lightly toasted brioche bun is only fair and decent. But also: super-annoying. Do you go for the early slot and pray the next booking doesn’t turn up? Or do you go for the later one and count on sweet-talking the waiter into letting you order another round? (Life hack: it won’t work.)

Having sold a child to get a table in a local beer garden, I thought I’d hit the jackpot with an 8.30pm-11.30pm slot on a Friday night. Three hours in a different corner of the same postcode? It felt as exciting as if Larry Levan had risen from the dead to play an all-nighter at Space. And it was fun for what seemed like 10 minutes, until the waiter came back saying he couldn’t serve us our round because he’d rung the order through at 10.31pm, a minute after closing time. That I can remember this sad tale is further proof that I was far more sober than I should have been. In the hefty email of rules and regs I’d been sent about my booking, the pub had failed to mention that last orders were at 10.30pm. London is open: just not as open as it used to be. Still, how lovely it is to eat, drink and be merry, if only for a few hours.

Down in one: you might have to with your allotted pub time slot