The Future Of The Moon Under Water

In Britain, we generally say simply that we are going to ‘the pub.’ Not a pub or even a specific pub, just ‘the pub.’ There are a few reasons for this. Either the person or people we are talking to know exactly which pub we mean - either through routine or habit - or because there is only one public house in the vicinity, or because we have no preference and just want to go to a pub, any pub.

The Red Lion is one of the most common pub names in England, but most people would call it simply The Lion.

Even when we name a specific pub, we are loath to use its full name, thus The Golden Lion or The Red Lion become simply, ‘The Lion.’  No one would call The Three Jolly Gardeners by its full name; it would just be The Gardeners. There’s a pub in Gants Hill called The King George The Fifth; it’s universally known as the KG5. Even pubs with single-word names, like The Victoria, get truncated to The Vic, and nicknames abound – The Black Swan might be dubbed The Mucky Duck for instance. Any pub in the Wetherspoons chain, whether it’s The Moon and Stars, The Eva Hart, or The Barking Dog, is just ‘Spoons.’

Whatever we call it, we know where we’re going when we say we’re going to the pub, except we’re not going to the pub at all at the moment since they were all closed on 20^th March due to the coronavirus pandemic. Immediately after the pubs were forced to call last orders for the foreseeable, it was reported that sales of alcohol for home consumption rose by 22% in March and this has been characterised by headlines like this one in The Times.

That headline misleads somewhat; off licence sales have undoubtedly increased, but no one is able to buy a pint in their local Spoons, so no one should be leaping on this and assuming that everyone under lockdown is permanently pie-eyed, they’ve simply modified their drinking habits is all.

I’m a fan of pubs, always have been. This is what I wrote in a blog called The Amateur Drinker back in 2015: “I like pubs. I make no bones about it; I like them a lot. I like country pubs with exposed beams and roaring fires, I like City pubs with their pin-striped clientele, I like "the local" with its cast of characters, I even like the slightly disreputable back street boozers you find in the East End. There are a few pubs I'd go out of my way to avoid, or at least not visit a second time, but generally, there are more I like than I don't like.”

In 1946, George Orwell wrote an article in the Evening Standard in which he described his ideal public house, which he called The Moon Under Water, a name which inspired the names of most of the Wetherspoon chain of pubs. 

George Orwell

Orwell’s Moon Under Water was architecturally Victorian; had a dart board in the public bar; was quiet enough to talk, “possessing neither radio nor piano”; sold snacks such as liver-sausage sandwiches; was staffed by barmaids who knew their customers’ names, and took an interest in them; sold creamy stout in pewter pots, and had a narrow passage from its saloon that led to a large garden. Few pubs combine all of the items on Orwell’s wish-list; not everyone would have subscribed to all of them in 1946, and fewer today, but his general idea holds true.

The Golden Lion (The Lion) in Romford was the first pub that I considered a place outside the home that I could call mine. It’s an old coaching inn that dates back to the 15^th century. It’s got old wooden beams in the ceiling and generally, it gives the impression that it is gradually sinking in much the way a person sinks into their favourite armchair. These days the bar lines one wall, but when I started drinking there in the mid to late 1970s, the bar was a horseshoe shape. It was comfortable, and a refuge where I would meet friends like Rob Godfrey, Howard Porter, Graham Bull, and Martin Bailey at weekends, but most nights of the week there would be someone there I’d know. I don’t get in there much these days, and it looks like it’ll be a while before I get the chance again anyway.

The Golden Lion, Romford

The Victoria (The Vic) in Barking was the pub of preference for the staff of the local Midland Bank when I worked there. A few of us were in there most lunchtimes, a sort of rotating cast of regulars of whom I, Paul Calvert, Dominic Healy, Danny Keech, and Gerry Baker were some. Friday nights would see some of the same cast, supplemented by Keith Markham, Bob Allam, and Robbie Smith, among others. Birthday bashes and leaving do’s would see the majority of the branch in attendance. Unlike The Golden Lion, The Victoria is a fairly modern pub, built in 1961 to replace a nearby pub of the same name that had been demolished. It’s fairly undistinguished, but like The Lion it wasn’t so much the building as the company of the people that frequented it that made it what it was.

The Victoria, Barking. Picture: Ewan Munro

The future of many of Britain’s pubs has been precarious for years, they are disappearing at an alarming rate, many being demolished or converted into flats or small supermarkets. In the East End of London, this is in part due to a shift in the local population, with many incomers to the area not part of the pub frequenting demographic. But other factors responsible for pub closures include price – it’s so much cheaper to buy booze from the supermarket and drink at home – and the dangers of drink driving that have seen many country pubs lose considerable trade. The smoking ban, the fact that fewer young people are drinking, and a culture in which staying in is the new going out are also responsible.

Many pubs that closed when coronavirus struck may never open their doors again, and those that do will have to adapt to social distancing measures that are likely to be in place for many months. Eyal Winter, an economist at Lancaster University, has speculated that pubs would be forced to ration drinkers to two or three drinks before asking them to leave in order to satisfy demand while still enforcing strict social distancing rules. I would suggest that the commonplace crush at the bar will have to go and that pubs may instead offer table service. Apps, like the one which Wetherspoons have and which enables customers to order and pay for drinks, and food, from their table could become the norm. Paying with cash will probably disappear from our pubs, with customers instead using contactless methods instead.

There is no official date suggested for when the pubs will reopen and any relaxation in the lockdown will be gradual; pubs may well be a long way down the list. As I write this, Sky News has tweeted that Wetherspoons say that they are planning for the reopening of their pubs “in or around June” which seems optimistic in the extreme. But there again Wetherspoons owner and amateur epidemiologist Tim Martin was vehemently opposed to pubs closing in the first place because according to him there had “hardly been any” transmission of coronavirus in pubs.

I’ve seen it mooted elsewhere that pubs will remain closed until Christmas but I would suggest that opening them for the festive season would be a spectacularly bad idea as they would be thronged – they are going to be whenever they reopen, but even more so at what is their busiest time of the year under normal circumstances.

The pubs that survive and are able to reopen whenever they are permitted to will undoubtedly do very good business, but one customer is going to be missing until things settle down and are proven safe, and that’s me. I like pubs, and I miss going to them, but it’s going to be a long time before I set foot in one again.