British pubs were on the decline before COVID-19 and the pandemic looked to be last call for these cornerstones of British community life. But as the pandemic winds down and England reopens, the British are realizing just how much they missed their locals.
We were nearing last call on the grandest of British institutions: the pub. After enduring for hundreds of years as centers for schmoozing and boozing, pubs were going the way of morning newspapers, afternoon tea, and the whole idea of empire. A range of factors undercut the kind of neighborhood joint where everyone knows your name. Then came COVID, which kept most British pubs closed for more than a year. But last summer, the U.K.
Paul and Bernice Drew have run the Old Star for 17 years. They met across the street, got engaged here. They live upstairs, the pub is their living room, the regulars their oldest friends.Paul Drew: Oh yeah everyday. Bernice and Paul Drew with correspondent Jon Wertheim Pete Brown: But it-- it starts off in a very practical way, which is that most of the population who went to pubs until recently were illiterate. So you couldn't put a name sign up. You had to have a pictorial sign. So you-- you'd pick a pic-- you'd pick a picture of something that had some resonance with people. But then some of the ones that you just mentioned, I think-- it's kind of the pub self-satirizing itself.
The Pub Landlord: We're sensible people in this country, aren't we? Down to earth people. We never put a man on the moon. Nah, the moon was never going to be part of the British Empire, was it? Nah. There's no one to give it back to once were done with it was there?Al Murray: He's a know-all who knows nothing. It's-- it's a guy who-- has power but no authority. It's a guy who is-- is writing intellectual checks he can't possibly cash.
This is just a little story to show that the spirit of the pubs is excellent, their houses bombed, they carry on outside.The lockdown gave Britain a glimpse of a future without pubs. For months, the cobbled streets where Dickens once walked: silent. The taverns where Chaucer or Shakespeare might have drunk: empty. Millions of barrels of beer literally down the drain. Pete Brown: Part of its identity. We celebrate our nationality in a very quiet way, in-- in a very modest way.