“If this desert’s all there’ll ever be
Then tell me what becomes of me.
A fall of rain
That must have been another of your dreams
A dream of mad man moon”.

(Genesis – Mad Man Moon from the Trick of the Tail album)

“Tempus Fugit”, one might say if one had been ‘blessed’ with an Etonian education. Ordinary Cornish folk might say “Time flies” if they live in a nice detached house in a picturesque coastal village, or “Bugger me, where’s that bleddy time gone?” if they were brought up in the shadow of a mine stack. And so it is that today, I can feel exactly that, how did 14 months of my life go so quickly?

I arrived in Bahrain on the 1st of February 2021 to begin a journey into the unknown. Up to that point, the Middle East was somewhere on the telly or in the Bible. A group of hot countries populated by camels and sand dunes, and a city called Dubai. I had no idea what or where the United Arab Emirates were. Qatar was a vague memory and had something to do with world cup football and the daily death toll of migrant workers, while Bahrain had something to do with Formula 1. Saudi Arabia of course was associated with Oil and 9/11. Oman? What is an Oman? And don’t mention Yemen as there’s a war on and no one in Hull, Hampstead or Helston gives a shit.

The British Press has not been very enlightening over the years, focused as it is, not on fostering peace and understanding between countries, but on the celebrity based trivia that is Westminster and Strictly.

The Financial Times will tell you how much Saudia Arabia is worth and where investments are at risk of burning faster than Gas. The Times might inform you that a government minister has visited to ingratiate themselves upon the Saudi Royal Family by offering shares in Oxfordshire, in return for oil. The Telegraph will tell you how we once ruled the region and why we should again (hint: because we know better). The Daily Mail might tell us who the wives of the Saudi King is and that opposing beheadings is ‘woke’. The Express would tell us that the reason Saudi Arabia is rich is because they are not part of the European Union and that Diana, Princess of Wales, once visited. The Guardian might inform us of the latest executions to have taken place and how horrible that is while ignoring the fact that the State of Texas is also fond of dispatching undesirables, albiet slower and involving torture by anticipation by long waits on death row. The Mirror has absolutely no idea where the Middle East is, except there is a clue in the name, as in:

‘You know where the Far East is?’

‘Yeah, Singapore and stuff’.

‘Well, not as far as that’.

The Sun might shout that women are not allowed to get their tits out, while the Star would show you a picture of the tits of a London based model of Arabic origin (her dad owns a kebab shop in the Mile End Road).

So, yes alighting in Bahrain was a bit of a culture shock which took at least 6 months to ease. I think I have got used to the extreme weather, the arabic food and the lack of a decent ale.

The weather is easily dealt with. You just stay indoors from about April until September. The eternal blue sky, daily sunshine and temperatures at first are alluring but, but.

The song lyric from ‘Mad Man Moon’ springs to mind:

“Within the valley of shadowless death
They pray for thunderclouds and rain
But to the multitude who stand in the rain
Heaven is where the sun shines.
The grass will be greener till the stems turn to brown
And thoughts will fly higher till the earth brings them down
Forever caught in desert lands, one has to learn
To disbelieve the sea“

The food? Let’s just say heaped mounds of rice with everything can easily be avoided because, believe it or not Saudi Arabia has joined the developed world in offering a very wide range of international cuisines. Restaurants abound in Jeddah blighted only by their lack of wine. The chefs at my hotel are superb, and each day vary the offering from each global region. Mind, I’ve yet to see a decent pasty or a cream tea. Saffron buns are an exotic delicacy which exist only in pictures on my laptop. Oh, they don’t do a decent steak and kidney pie for why I’ve no idea because their skill in other cuisines is five star.

Don’t ask for pork.

I once remarked to a rather pretty Saudi woman in the office that if she ever came to Cornwall, I’d give her an experience to savour, something she’d remember for a very long time…I winked and said “how would you like some sausage?”

Of course, I didn’t say that, I like my scrotum attached. And I am a gentleman of honour.

As for an ale, while it is true that this is officially a dry country – and not just in January – it is certainly the case that, behind closed doors, booze flows freely in many a Saudi household. They just keep it quiet and ‘nod, nod, wink, wink, say no more’. It is a bit like masturbation or felching, everyone is doing it, but it’s not something you discuss after the meeting in the office. The bars and whorehouses of Bahrain, Dubai and Qatar are awash with Saudi money and Saudi men who enjoy the sins of the flesh as much as any pissed up pussy grabbing infidel in the White House or a Downing Street party. However, I’m not ‘in the loop’, so all of this debauchery happens elsewhere. For all I know the Saudi couple in the next room could be bang at it after snorting a gram of coke and sipping champagne while dancing to ‘Come on Eileen’ at three in the morning.

I’ll be glad to leave the sun soaked madness behind and come home to what some might see as a boring routine. I’ve missed the everyday ordinariness of life in Cornwall, free from fears of being arrested for thinking naughty thoughts and then being publically flogged in front of a ragged cheering crowd in the execution square in Jeddah. I especially miss being with Ann. Although I dare say not having an annoying messy twat about the house has probably increased her quality of life ten fold. We can get back to the important thngs in life such as the petty bickering about loading the dishwasher, the temperature of the central heating and leaving tea stains on the work top. Oh the joys of a ‘full english’ on a weekend morning, and stanking through the woods and across the fields to a pub serving warm ale and pork scratchings besides a log fire or a sunday dinner with crackling and a decent Rioja.

I miss mates, even the misfits and the drunks. I miss my children, even the misfits and the drunks. I miss my family, even the misfits and the drunks.

I’ll be first in the queue for a pasty.

I might even enjoy a bit of rain.

Once upon a time there was a village idiot and everyone knew who he was. He’d be the one pushing hard on the field gate, sweating profusely at the effort and mumbling cuss words only to see Farmer Giles walk across the field and pull it open. Or he’d be strolling down the country lane sticking his finger into horse dung and licking it in order to find out if the pile of straw laden poo really was what he thought it was, and then muttering to himself ‘good job I didn’t step in that’. He’d be the one standing directly behind the back legs of a jittery horse just as the Blacksmith was about to bang a horshoe into shape on the anvil in front of its face, or he might be seen looking down the barrel of a shotgun to check it was loaded. He’d also be the one to say “not that I know of”, after projectile vomiting in the public bar of the village pub, in answer to the doctor’s question ‘have you been eating something strange, because your breath smells of horse shit?”

Stupidity once upon a time was easy to spot. Sometimes all you had to do was to look to see who sat upon the throne, or charged into battle first without checking if the cavalry really was following, or looking up into the air just as a shower of arrows rained down. That sort of stupidity dressed itself in arrogance and hubris and it often wore the Crown. It married six times, or tried to bankrupt the treasury before losing its head, or murdered its nephews in a tower, or married a German only to find his Teutonic family came after you wearing spiked helmets and brandishing bayonets. It might have flirted with fascists or married an American against the advice of some on the planet who thought she was a ‘wrong un’, a feat to be repeated later in history. This sort of stupidity got itself mixed up with inbreeding and the production of sprogs with an uncertain paternity. It also thought that it was a good idea to snort coke and give a blow job in the back of a speeding car in Paris, and then it went for a pizza before thinking that making friends with a nonce would be a harmless past time, like setting fire to your scrotum with a little bit of napalm would be a harmless past time.

I guess the universe was pretty stupid when it allowed a monkey with a slighly larger brain to first discover that a stick could become a tool only for that monkey to forget that it is still a part of nature and not above it. Bonobos spend ther time wanking each other and engaging in anal sex. Perhaps our ancestors should have put the stick down and focused on perfecting primate incest.

There is a modern form of stupidity which wears a different set of clothes. You might spot it wearing a business suit and sitting in the boardroom while paying itself huge amounts of cash and share options. This form of stupidity thinks shareholder value is its primary duty and to that end has made sure that this is its legal duty which it then calls moral. This is the morality of the drug addled whore who thinks giving blow jobs to Old Etonians in back alleys is doing public service. It hires stupid lawyers and stupid accountants and buys stupid politicians to ensure it gets its stupid way. It thinks that a finite planet will support growth infinitetly and stupidly thinks slavery was abolished after the American civil war instead of polishing its shoes on the way to the next business meeting. Boeing stupidly put safety to one side when it introduced a modification to the flight control system on a new version of an old aircraft but did not bother to tell the pilots. Three hundred and forty six people died to teach them a lesson.

Today, stupidity allies itself with delusion, put on the Emperor’s clothes and marched into Ukraine failing to see that we can all see his buttocks with the tattoo of a target on each cheek. We have yet to see if this level of stupidity will kill us all before the stupidity that is ignoring climate change does it first. Stupidity wanted to Make America Great Again by grabbing women by the pussy, building walls and stopping black people from breathing. It is expressing itself through the medium of the gun and the Bible, as if a book written by desert dwelling goat farmers has anything meaningful to say to a generation hooked on digital reality, tik toking themselves into the narcissitic void in which pop has not so much eaten itself but disappeared into the arsehole of formulaic irrelevance.

A Prince once remarked after the death of his father:

“What a piece of work is man! How noble in reason! how infinite in faculties! in form and moving, how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension, how like a god! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals! And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust?” Hamlet was on to something there. We have gone to the moon, dived to the depths of the oceans, explored the densest of forests and climbed the highest of mountains searching all the while to understand, but in all of that searching we did not find a way to live peacefully together.

Stupidity today receives large salaries, obtains university degrees, and runs countries. It flies fighter jets, drives tanks and designs surface to air missiles. It is a special form of cognitive deficit in which it cannot recognise its own stupidity. This form of stupidity does not recognise the turd gently floating in its bowl of custard. It can’t see it because it is not looking for it.

It is repeatedly pushing on the field gate, stickings its finger into shit, and staring down the barrel of a gun.

Photo by Brandi Alexandra on Unsplash

Saudi Arabians are a very polite people. They smile a lot, especially when they greet you in the mornings. The reason for this, I found out, is not because of some genetic predisposition towards bonhomie, nor is it because they are just glad to be alive, having lived for centuries in a climate that is daily trying its best to kill them. Having a sunny disposition in a sunny climate is not as easy as we might think. I know, when you are strolling along Blackpool beach leaning into rain that is coming down at a 45 degree angle, the wind whipping through your bones like a turbo charged x-ray, holding an increasingly sodden bag of chips that now resembles a mush of grey tapioca that even the gulls turn their beaks up at, I can understand why a ‘sunny climate’ might seem attractive and something to be grateful for. However, daily temperatures that allow the frying of eggs on a car bonnet, while simultaneously welding unprotected human orifices tight (should you be so foolish to be out in the noonday sun) are no smiling matter. A winter in Cornwall is almost as uninhabitable as a summer in Saudi Arabia. And yet they smile.

Can you imagine meeting Denzil Penberthy in Commercial Square in Camborne on a damp February afternoon when the sky is slate grey, its near to freezing and you are drowning in mizzle with every breath you take? Imagine that every gust is blowing the empty tins of Special Brew in a clanking eddy around the fountain? Would he be catching your eye with a dazzling smile, saying “wishing you good morning, a morning full of flowers” to which the response is “wishing you a morning full of light”. Well, that’s what the Arabic greeting is. With a smile.

Of course there are very few flowers in the desert, but there is light, lots of it. Enough to burn a retina into a bloody pulp. The smiling is not a result of reality, it is not that their mornings really are a bed of roses nor a shimmering light. Allah alone knows how they coped before Ray-bans. The smiling is due to an injunction within Islam. ‘Allaah The Almighty created mankind with an innate inclination to love those who are friendly. A person who meets others with a smile drives away their anxiety and troubles and spreads tranquility and comfort. This is because smiling is a commendable characteristic, and the one who smiles is complimented‘.

That’s nice.

Now I’m all for smiling at folk. Perhaps that’s what we need when stanking up Redruth hill to the Chemists to stock up on Antacids, Anusol and Incontinence pads. We need a reminder during a gale that a ‘smile drives away anxiety and spreads tranquility and comfort’. The Council should put up posters to encourage us to be cheery towards each other despite the sense of impending doom every time the price of a pasty increases. A simple message would do it. A poster simply with the smiley emoticon, underneath in a comic font: “Smile, you Bastards, it don’t bleddy cost much”, should be put up in the doctors’ surgery waiting room, the job centre and the pound shop window.

But I’m afraid that just will not do in Cornwall. We don’t readily respond to cheeriness because we think the bonhomie is masking something ominous. We think, in response to a smile and cheery nod, “What’s that silly bugger want? Money?” An inner voice cries ‘he’s after something, but he ain’t fooling me’. We don’t voice that of course, we are far more likely to answer with just a grunt that sounds like a pig snuffling for turnip roots, or we might say ‘right on’ or ‘you?’ (pronounced yeeeeew). The typical upbeat ‘Good day to you sir, isn’t life wonderful’ greeting in Cornwall goes something like:

“Alright?”

“Ess, you?”

“Right on”.

In Saudi Arabia, the phraseology of greeting invokes sunlight, flowers, the smell of jasmine and rose petals. It wishes the bounties of heaven to be bestowed upon you and you family. Your camel is to be blessed and your goat made fecund. One phrase literally means “May the Ram of Heaven insert his penis of Peace into the Ewe of Family and thereby inject the seed of tranquility and love”. All of that in a simple bidding of “morning”.

Poetic.

In Cornwall, it is as if each word used in greeting would drain the bank balance, as if each word has its price, and the pain of spending money is keenly felt in Cornwall. Words are free, they don’t cost much in reality so perhaps we could use more of them? Yet, there is a tendency to shorten words as if every syllable comes with a cost, as if each tiny letter arrives with an invoice. The three syllable ‘Di-rect-ly’ is shortened to the two syllable ‘Drek-ly’, thats a massive 33% saving right there! The word itself is a shortened form of “That will be done as soon as possible” or “I will attend to that immediately”. Both of which are, of course, stretching the truth to the degree that it snaps. They mean the opposite.

Consider the utterance ‘Gisson‘. Now that saves another massive amount of verbiage as it replaces such phrases as “Really? You do surprise me with that information. I ought to check because the veracity of that is questionable” or just ‘Gisson‘. If the person is feeling like spending just a little bit more, they might tack on “wiv ‘ee” to the Gisson. That would be for emphasis, meaning they really are doubting the truth value of your assertion.

“I see Philps’ ‘ave put up the price of a standard steak again”

“Gisson!”

The truth value of the assertion is slightly doubted as the receiver of the bad news has not been to Philp’s for a while and is out of the loop of pasty price rises. Mind, if he had yesterday been into Philp’s and had a pasty lunch without being too surpised at the price, he might say in disbelief:

“Gisson wiv’ee” indicating that the news bearer was taking the piss.

Don’t mention the price of a cream tea though, there’d be ‘ell up.

Saudi’s spend their words like they spend their oil dollars. Effusively, luxuriously and colourfully. The verbiage expended at a regular Saudi office meeting resembles an oil well spouting a thick black stream of sticky crude a hundred feet into the air. And it has to be noted, it is with the same amount of opacity. There is no necessary relationship between the amount of words used and the action that flows from them. Hours are spent just talking, about what I have no idea. It is even worse when they use Arabic, which to the untuned west country ear sounds like they are permanently gagging on camel dung. A Cornish business meeting lasts no longer than a pint of Spingo in the heyday of Helston’s market day in comparison:

“Alright? Wasson?”

“We got to agree the price rise of the standard steak”

“50 pence?”

“Right on”

“Proper, then that’s agreed…pint anyone…the Blue Anchor’s just opened”

“Did anyone consult Denzil though?”

And with that, the business meeting would end and they’d stank off through the mizzle to the pub.

Proper bleddy job.

As I write, civilised men are driving tanks trying to kill me. The descendents of Tchaikovsky, Kropotkin and Solzhenitsyn no more want to do this than set fire to their vodka soaked nasal hair. I rather suspect that they’d rather stay in bed drinking and playing chess until their pants fall down. And yet, there they are driving across the land in an attempt to save the Russian Motherland from those who their boss calls nazis, while also being told to ‘fuck off’ by weather worn Ukrianian grandmothers driving tractors.

When I write that they are trying to kill me, this is meant metaphorically. I am not actually anywhere near Ukraine. But, I could have been. But for sheer accident of birth, and all that has since flowed from that simple fact, I could have been in Poland, Korea, Vietnam, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Palestine, Kuwait, Syria, Iraq, or Yemen. I could have been the Universal soldier being Universally fucked.

Trying to squeeze some humour from life right now isn’t easy, but let’s try before we breath in solid lungfuls of radioactive dust. So, let’s take a look at the guilty men who are gaily tripping down the garden path called oblivion towards the brick shithouse called apocalypse.

Vladimir Rat Face Putin, an ex cold war KGB foreign intelligence operative with as much of a sense of humour as a three week old putrifying corpse floating face down in the Volga while a duck picks at the weeds growing from between its buttocks. He doesn’t like homosexuals, jews or chocolate hobnobs. His mother left him to clean the shower blocks in the Gulags before he was born, setting up psychological trauma early in his life. His father was a lawnmower. In 1970, he was eighteen years of age and so spent some of the best years of his life in one of the worse countries in the world. If you think interior decor, haircuts and fashion was bad enough in Scunthorpe on a wet tuesday night, then think of Putin in some grey, damp, freezing tenement flat desperate for a wank but with zero access to back copies of Mayfair and only made worse by having to share a bedroom with his five younger brothers and sisters who loved to be sung Siberian folk songs at bedtime. You try playing with yourself while surrounded by a screeching chorus about the village cow being chased by crows.

I’m not trying to invoke sympathy here. Nor am I trying to explain his current decision making. I’m merely pointing out that if you’d lived through the 1970s in Soviet Russia, you too might greet impending nuclear oblivion with the same enthusiasm as a virgin bride greets her drunk tumesecent husband in the honeymoon suite – its going to happen, and its going to hurt, but it must be done. No worries though, you’ve already experienced worse, at least its not the goat.

Putin married a human being, in an attempt to develop a knowledge of how to have a relationship, to develop empathy and to care, to think of others needs before one’s own. This was as successful an attempt at being human as was Dr Frankenstein’s first prototype built out of bits of string, half a dead pig and a cabbage for the head. It doesn’t need to be said how the marriage worked out, suffice to say his wife disappeared not long after he had a large chest freezer delivered to his basement.

His career in the KGB saw him deployed to East Germany where his skills were put to good use in the ‘extraction of information’ department. At the interview he confessed to enjoying picking the wings off flies, cutting the legs off spiders and playing five a side with kittens in a hessian sack for a football. He was therefore perfect for the job of encouraging citizens to part with information along with their fingernails.

Hair loss was a particular setback. His emotional development didn’t just slow at that point, it went into a full on ‘Napoleonic Retreat fom Moscow’ type of reverse. His emotional intelligence was that of a half starved pit bull deciding if the cat should live while being poked in the anus with a red hot poker. Let’s just say moral reasoning needed some work. His lack of hair was not helped by a tiny ‘Jap’s eye’ birthmark on the top of his head that everyone said made him look like a prick when he bent forward. To this day he has to have it covered in make up before he goes out.

He speaks three languages though, all of them variations of Russian with a vocabulary consisting of references to snow, potatoes and falsehoods. His favourite proverbs are metaphorical references to abandonment, loss and revenge. He is particularly fond of saying “A bird in the hand is worth crushing to death”, “Look before you die”, and “Mummy, why did you leave me to be looked after by a lawmower, you heartless bastard!” (a Siberian favourite that one). He once tried speaking German to Angela Merkel borrowing a phrase from a history book in an attempt to impress her with his knowledge. He failed to pick up that the book was about the siege of Stalingrad and that the German phrase was not “pleased to meet you” but rather “Surrender communist pigs, we are the Waffen SS and we are going to make your bollocks smoke and your penis so black it’ll resemble a blutwurst!” Merkel for her part smiled diplomatically but vowed to start giving weapons secretly to Ukraine.

His translator was later found sitting on a bench in Gorky park, but without his head.

Which brings us nicely up to date. We now find ourselves confronting a nuclear armed insecure overachiever with a grudge. What could possibly go wrong?

Everyone knows that many people native to this wind blown, rain sodden, brass monkey scaring, pastoral idyll known as Britain……like to drink. We don’t have to look very far (outside the window is enough) or ponder for very long (about a minute) to think of reasons why. Until the advent of double glazing, central heating and an offering of comestibles that goes beyond worm infested earth encrusted root vegetables, nettle leaves infused by fox piss, and a few grains of limp oats, life was often ‘solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short’ due in part to the relentless rain, wind and cold.

Winter is no better.

Even the aristocracy in medieval times felt the cold and resorted to throwing a few serfs onto the fire when the logs ran out. For all their wealth, they often lacked spices to, er, ‘spice up’ their dinners. They could not even dream of a decent tikka masala because India had not been invented. So for serf and lord alike, booze got them them through the day in an attempt just to survive until the dawn while living on an island that was trying to kill them. Winter of course was especially harsh. During the long dark months, alongside their baby making and God bothering, a piss up was not only a relief from the cold, it was a necessity.

Ever since the Romans turned up and brought a cheeky little Chianti with them, the natives of this fair isle had developed their taste for the distilled grape and grain. Mind, the Celts were no slouches when it came to a piss up. Archeologists have found flagons, cups, banqueting vessels, cauldrons, basins, plates, bowls and ‘drinking horns’ – the latter does not refer to the male tumescent state brought on by a few pints of Spingo, but to drinking vessels fashioned out of bits of animal. At festival time (every weekend) before you could say ‘where’s me woad?’, frothy flagons of ale helped to slake thirsty throats to help them ignore the pain from the the frost forming on exposed bits of blue painted genital. Crowds would gather round winter fires, raucously sing songs to the Gods, stuffing their faces with roasted pig all the while slapping the arses of passing serving wenches.

The men were no better.

This was the precursor to the pub. A fire pit, gallons of ale and a cheeky ‘spit roast’ in the fading light of the sun, while singing and attending to a crispy fat dripping hog staked out over the logs. If they were to have a sign outside, it might say something like ‘The Hog and Ale’ or ‘The Flagon and Fettle’ or ‘The Huge Ring of Stones’. There would of course be no references to Royalty (sweating or otherwise) or pizzas. Princes of Wales and York had yet to make an appearance.

Some historians of culture have suggested that not much has changed over two millenia since the Romans left, and while remnants of the Celts can only be found in far flung fringes of these islands, they passed down their genes through the generations so that modern day enthusiasts are directly linked to their ancestors. It is a scientific fact that genes can be altered by the environment, both physical and social. This process is called epigenetics. If you have the Celtic drinking gene, you are predisposed to get shit faced when the sun rises, and when it sets, and at equinox, and at solstices. The moon phases affects you in a similar way. So the next time you find yourself face down in a stranger’s cleavage, while holding up your kebab so that you don’t drop it into the canal, all the while trying to sing D:Ream’s ‘Things can only get better’ (but deep down you know they won’t), you can blame the Celts. Or the Romans, the Anglo Saxons, the Danes, Normans, the Jews, the Hugeunots, the Irish, Cornish, Picts, Scots and Welsh. They all loved a piss up.

The core components of a drinking session did not change for 2000 years or so. All you needed was ale or strong liquor, a warm fire, songs and a certain licence to misbehave as the sun sets. Sex was integral to the whole process, in fact it was the only time sex took place. Alcohol was the necessery ingredient to facilitate coupling. Don’t forget this was a time without bidets and aloe vera skin softener, no shampoo or shavers and certainly no hot running water. Winter clothes were put on after the midsummer wash by the river and kept on until the spring equinox. No one smelled any worse than anyone else but untrimmed bushes could hide a ‘Billinsgate’s Worth’ braved only by the desperate when sober. The very worse aromas from fetid foreskins would be kept well inside the layers of animal skins that made up their garments. The ‘underwear’ would be smothering a multiplicity of oderous sins, and so it takes being really pissed to endure the instant release of a few month’s worth of collected body emissions lurking among the furs. Remember also that not only was personal hygiene sorely lacking, so too were trips to the dental hygienist. Kissing back then was akin to sticking your tongue into a dog’s ringpiece.

There was an eclectic turn to the piss up when folk from the colonies joined in the partying. They added much need rainbow colour and magic to the proceedings as well as funny smelling plants. Many pubs all over our cities became havens of hedonism that would make a Roman orgy look like play time at kindergarden. New forms of music blossomed and ‘new’ chemicals in the 1980s and 1990s were discovered so that the necessary relationship between sex and alcohol was leavened by new forms of genital bonding by proxy via a chemical brother, or sister, offering a cheeky half or the soon to be ubiquitous double drop. Alcohol for a short while fell out of favour to the yoof, and pubs were left to the remnants of the boomer generation.

Back in the 19th century, the Temperance movement attempted to wean us all off the demon drink, with a modicum of success it has to be said. Their first argument was that drink was being used by the bosses to keep the workforce docile. Not too much drink so that they cannot work, but just enough to prevent them from banding together and cutting the throats of the running dogs of capitalism. Pubs were therefore part of what Louis Althusser later called the ‘repressive state apparatus’ – put to use to keep the mass of workers under control, a bit like marriage and a mortgage does today. So when Red Fred the union rep suggested storming the managers office, his mates would suggest having a pint first. And we all know where that first pint takes us. Let’s just say it leads to not so much as storming the walls of the Bastille as taking a piss against them before giving up and going for a kebab.

Then there was the ‘destruction to family life’ argument which suggested that the cost of drink was taking the food out of children’s mouths. Every penny spent on a Guiness means a penny cannot be spent on a potato to be fed to Tiny Tim. You can’t fault the logic. Pubs are now forms of child abuse, except child abuse did not exist back then. How was the Empire going to be built without child labour to supplement indentured servitude? After all, it was Jesus who said ‘suffer the little children’ so it can’t be bad can it? Anyway, this call to the moral conscience of the working class was doomed to failure simply because your average miner, ship builder and agricultural labourer did not give a shit. The condensation running down the outside of a pint would no more remind them of a starving child’s tears than Jesus Christ Almighty appearing in person would remind them that they were wretched sinners doomed to spend the rest of their eternal lives being poked up the arse by one of satan’s demons.

Then, when that failed, there was an appeal to health. But what on earth made them think that telling folk booze was bad for you would work when pictures of starving children and battered wives wouldn’t? If you worked down the pit and you saw your 40th birthday, you were lucky. The working class died young. Heart attacks, strokes and liver disease were, for most, so far in the future as to render them irrelevant. Pubs were now a menace to Public Health. Mind, insanitary housing, appalling working conditions, a diet based on a knobbly potato and some cabbage if you were lucky, one shithouse per street, the pox, plague and pneumonia stalking the neighbourhood, and you want us to worry about a pint of porter and the odd gin? The argument never washed then and it still doesn’t. We know for certain the heath risks booze entails but millions in pubs and bars up and down the Kingdom could not give any fewer (or is that less?) fucks.

Suffice to say, you Temperance if you want to…the rest of us are going to get royally shitfaced at every opportune moment.

The latest incarnation of the pub is the gastro pub. In other words, a restaurant. They look like pubs from the outside but usually a bit cleaner with a few more BMWs and Mercedes in the car park, if you are in Oxfordshire, or a Renault clio or your Dad’s work van if you are in Redruth. When you walk in they look like a pub but no one is at the bar. You can’t really sit and engage mine host with stories about how your boss is a wanker, the new car you’ve just bought and how Tenerife is nice this time of year. You can confirm that you’ve booked a table and order the first round, but you’d better get your arse to your table. You will be given a menu that has items on it that amount to being common fare, but ponced up in description. Pork belly is not just pork belly. It is Roasted Manuka Honey Glazed Buttercup Farm Pork served with a twizzle of home grown swede and five peas hand picked in Norfolk. The ‘chips’ look like a game of Jenga. ‘Buttercup Farm’ is in fact a huge grey shed the size of Wembley stadium on an industrial estate on the outskirts of Swindon which mechanically slaughters 1,000 pigs per week importing them from Belgium (before Brexit).

They don’t serve pork scratchings, which to my mind is one of the defining fetarures of a pub. They may not even serve beer. Just an array of fancy bottles from Japan, Belgium and the Ukraine (before Putin). You can buy wine of course, that eternal favourite of your average scaffolder. Swearing is not allowed, which is a bit of cunt really, nor are ribald stories. So, Not really a pub then.

Right. I’m off for a pint.