Friday, June 01, 2012

HBH 288

The landlord's new friends,
Thumbing noses at the law - 
A late-night lock-in.


Despite a considerable liberalisation of the laws in the past decade or so in the UK on the permitted hours of operation for licensed (i.e., alcohol selling) premises, many pubs still keep to the traditional (well, a tradition stretching back some 80 years) closing time of 11pm, and even those that have opted to extend their hours rarely stay open beyond 12 or 12.30am. It is therefore a pleasant surprise - positively exhilarating - to find a city centre pub that locks its front door at midnight and then keeps serving, without a licence, for another two or three hours. We feel like naughty schoolboys, staying up way beyond our bedtimes for the sheer transgressive - self-destructive! - thrill of it.

Drinking till 3am in a bar that's still officially 'open', drinking legally, just isn't the same.

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