Pah-dee

I'm off to my niece's 16th birthday party this evening.  And it's a Friday!  This means I'll be able to neck fine wine (I'm off ale for Lent, as previously reported) all evening without a care for what the hour hand is doing.  I'm not certain how much niece #2 is looking forward to the shindig, but that is to miss the point.  The real point of this evening is to give the adult cohort of the family a rare and wafer-thin excuse to gather together and break bread.

I understand from my mother that the urchin will be having her actual birthday party tomorrow, i.e., the one with guests she likes and actually wishes to spend time with.  Suits me - I can't imagine a worse fate than sharing a house with two dozen frowning and sullen teenagers when I'm trying to get oiled.  It curdles the wine.

The event has got me to thinking about age, and its historically-specific nature.  When I was 16, I was a regular pub-goer.  This wasn't unusual either.  As soon as we hit 16, all my friends and I would gather in the beer garden of a yoot-friendly boozer close to home every Friday evening.  It was the done thing then.  Nowadays, it seems to me, 16 year olds are more like children than we were at their age.  They don't drink for the most part, and certainly wouldn't be seen dead in a pub.  Part of the reason for this of course is ID-fascism.  Young people cannot go anywhere or do anything without carrying their State-sanctioned bona fides.  This is horrifying to new wave English hippy like myself.

How, I wonder, are youngsters supposed to learn the pub etiquette, given the current set-up?  The rules of this environment are as unwritten as they are complex.  You have to serve your time in the pub is absorb it.  I do hope this doesn't mark the beginning of the end of the role of the pub in British society.  If youngsters aren't introduced to pub-life, chances are the culture will wither on the vine.  Instead we'll become a nation of bar-goers.  Sod that.  Bars have their place, i.e., inside hotels, but on the high street the pub is king.