Chris Maclean: Too much of a good thing

I see in our local paper this week that it is now twenty years since pubs were allowed to open all day. On the day when this happened, twenty years ago four of us drank for the whole session in the Gate Inn, Marshside from eleven until eleven. It was messy. Haven't things changed a lot since then?

Back then I can remember the reluctant departure when the landlord threw you out at two-thirty and the queues to get back into the pubs at six o'clock. Back then you had to map out when you intended to drink. You had to have a strategy ~ you couldn't leave it to chance.

It is all the more relevant since I've also just received a number of photographs of the interior of this pub around that period. There are many things you'd scarcely recognise. Modest beer pumps on the bar counter, a small array of snacks. Hand written notices announcing meat raffles. Draught lager at £1.25 a pint. Dodgy carpet and wallpaper. Everything matching and neat.

I have to confess I have never been a fan of the extended hours. I've always been of the opinion that if you couldn't get a sufficiency of beer in the hours available then you weren't really trying.

But more worrying, for me, was the impact it would have on the role of the landlord.

At it's most basic the original hours provided 9 1/2 hours drinking over the day. A licensee and their partner could run a modest little operation perhaps 5 or 6 days a week by themselves with someone to step in for them on their day off. Such hours were not unacceptable or unusual.

When all day opening was proposed it was impossible for licensees to work yet more hours.A forty-five or fifty hour week was natural but what about an eighty hour week?

Three things emerged from the extended hours; firstly the tradition of the licensee being "mine host" became impossible to maintain. No one could work all those extra hours. The consequence of this was that bars became increasingly anonymous places where the staff behind the bar were less able, or likely, to entertain customers like the traditional licensee model.

The licensee simply couldn't be there all of the time. Recent comments about my pub on beerintheevening.com have remarked at my absence behind the bar. That's hurtful. I do the hours but not all of the 76 hours the pub is open ~ there are other things I do apart from selling beer.

Secondly it was swiftly apparent that for all the additional hours and costs there was no discernable increase in trade. Paradoxically the six o'clock post-work rush vanished when the pubs could open all afternoon. The popular two-hour Sunday lunchtime session also collapsed. Licensees were under pressure to keep open as long as they could to optimise their income and not allow the competition to steal the show.

The third consequence of the extended hours was the evolution of the super-pub. Old church halls, banks and retail stores were converted into factory pubs where the economies of scale allowed the operators to sell beer cheaply with very low overheads. And we know how that affected other, traditional pubs.

I will not be raising a glass to the extended hours. They are here now and pubs are not better of for them. But they are here to stay and we have to make the best of them. But it is a pity though.