Banned: Children in Pubs

Time, Children, Please

A couple of things first. I have a kid, and I have been to the pub with her. I am not talking about banning kids from big pseudo-pubs with gardens that do food and that welcome families into their warm embrace. To me, these aren't pubs. These are restaurants in all but name. They scorn the solo drinker or the crowd on a serious session. No, these aren't pubs. Pubs don't serve pizzas. Pubs let you prop up the bar and drink pint after pint without ever asking you if you are 'eating'. Pubs are where men should be able to go for refuge from whatever it is they feel they need refuge from. Like kids.

When I go to the pub I don't want to see my daughter. Or anyone of her age, or any age under 18. I might want to get drunk. I don't want kids to see me drunk. I might want to talk loudly and swear. I don't want kids to see me doing that either. But it isn't really what I don't want kids to see, it's what I don't want to see. I don't want to see kids. I don't want to hear their high-pitched voices and I don't want them running around, reminding me of responsibility and eveyday life. I dont want to hear them playing fruit machines. I don't want them asking me for a packet of crisps. I want to escape in an alcoholic haze with like-minded souls. Kids have taken over everywhere else in the world, and now they want our pubs. Enough, I say.

When I was a kid, on the seriously rare occasions my parents actually took me to the pub (I can recall two, count them, two visits to a pub - usually I was left at home with my twelve-year-old brother to watch TV until as late as we wanted) I sat out on the street and was brought a packet of scratchings. No coke, because the pub didn't sell coke. Pubs should be dark, smokey, mysterious places, where men go to do dark, smokey, mysterious things. We have already, tragically, seen them lose the smoke, now the darkness and mystery are treatened too. By an 'open-door' policy. It's absurd. With the kids come bigger windows to let in light and make them less 'threatening'. And the smell of cooked food - no real pub should do cooked food. And tele-bloody-vision to 'entertain' them as they are incapable of entertaining themsleves.

This is the problem. Kids and kid-friendly pubs see the pub as a place which works on many 'platforms'. You can watch TV, eat, play games - it's like an extension of home, and this is wrong. I blame a new breed of parent who has to do everything with their bloody kids. So, they want football grounds to be 'family-friendly'. They want work places to have crushes or whatever they are called so they can bring their children to work! And they want pubs to welcome whole broods. These parents never really liked or went to the pub anyway, but they are part of its continuing decline. Simple pubs, where people go to drink and talk and take a break from everyday life, are dying because they don't 'offer' enough 'options' to these dweeb families in their Bodin clothes, sipping a solo drink and taking twenty minutes to read the bloody menu. Screw 'em. I'd give my time and money to any pub which had prominently displayed on its door 'Children And Parent Groups Are Barred From These Premises'