It Was The Best of Times/It Was The Worst of Times

For many people today will be their last working day before Christmas – which, in TapsRichardland® is otherwise known as THE absolute very worst day of the year in the pub.

I think that I may have mentioned it before, but the only serious fight I’ve ever seen in Taps (this is going back 6 years or so now) was on the last working day before Christmas.  There must have been twenty five to thirty blokes involved in a mass brawl (seriously going at it) that stretched from the hatch to the door, and every single one of them was a pissed up Christmas drinker.

The reason for my antipathy towards Christmas amateur drinkers is a combination of things really. First there’s so many of them – and they’re all out from about 5:30pm – so it’s not even as though there’s a slow build up of them as you’d get on a normal Friday night.

So they’re all just there (mainly all grouped standing in front of the door for some extraordinary reason. Although, last night, upping the ante for sheer outright stupidity, two particularly bright sparks thought it would be a good idea to sit on stools right in front of the door). And then most of them are complete bloody amateurs. They don’t know how to order properly, and many of them just aren’t used to drinking and so end up completely hammered after only a few drinks, which, inevitably, leads to people acting like complete knobs and then being sick (one follows the other like the Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire or a hangover after a free bar).

And then they just don’t know how to behave in a pub environment. Don’t know how to order or where to stand. Don’t know where to put their bags and their coats and aren’t aware of how they’re supposed to move past people in a crowded pub without knocking over everyone’s drinks.

They jostle and they shout and well…

Well, it is what it is I suppose. There’s no real point in me banging on about it [not that that normally stops me of course]. Even though, sitting here writing this at 2:34 in the afternoon, I know exactly what it’s going to be like when I get there, I suppose I have to bear in mind that this sort of thing only happens on a couple of odd nights a year.

Of course, no matter how equanimical I try to be about all of this, I’d have to be made of iron and stone not to begrudge them ruining the pub at least a little bit.

I suppose that the best way to look at amateur drinkers is in the same way that people who work in central London look at tourists when they just stop dead in the middle of the pavement for absolutely no reason at all, or when they insist on standing on the left hand side of the escalator. All you can really do is take a deep breath and remind yourself that they don’t know any better.  They’re not doing it on purpose and all they’re really doing is enjoying a new experience in an unfamilair environment.

Of course, that isn’t to say that if someone takes my stool there won’t be bloodshed.

[by bloodshed I mean I’ll get in a huff and go to the Kings Head]

I am, after all, only human.