Whilst in that post-holiday haze (as I currently am following two delightful weeks traversing Die Autobahn through Austria and Germany), it’s easy for us Brits to lament such idyllic experiences in their immediate aftermath. Why is it always so grey here? (certainly a question that sprung to mind coming into land amid an apparent explosion-in-a-cotton-wool-factory above Ringo Starr Airport in Liverpool); why do we not have a cheap and reliable public transport infrastructure?; and, most tellingly of all for the purposes of this blog post, why can’t we seem to enjoy a sociable drink in Britain without it descending every single time into booze-fuelled mayhem?
OK, so maybe that last point is something of an exaggeration. However, the differences in the sociable drinking experience across Europe, most notably from Britain and Germany (two notable “drinking cultures”, and handily, the two countries I am most able to immediately reference), is something I pondered in between sips of my Steiner of Hofbrau, mouthfuls of giant pretzel, and the Oompah-band’s renditions of “Blueberry Hill” and “Don’t Cry for me Argentina” in the (somewhat ironically named) Englischer Garten in Munich.
As I sat there, I was taken by the relaxed and entirely non-threatening environment in which people were drinking frankly enormous amounts of lager. Sure, there was the obligatory British Stag-Do in matching T-shirts (who were, to be fair, incredibly well behaved). However, surveying the rest of the patrons, I noticed a large amount of older people, and indeed families treating the place with respect, enjoying each others’ company, and generally “enjoying alcohol responsibly” – with not a bouncer, a paramedic, Police in riot gear, or most mercifully of all, a Wacky Warehouse, in sight. All of this whilst drinking out of an actual GLASS!
Rather than making me feel enraged with cultural jealousy, it got me thinking: Why would this not work in Britain? What happened to the “cafe culture” Tessa Jowell et al were hoping for when the licensing hours were extended? Or am I kidding myself, and the problems we have with alcohol in Britain just as acute elsewhere in Europe, but not in quaint tourist haunts such as this? Can this kind of responsible drinking culture be fostered by encouraging individual behavioural change? Can such a culture be legislated for?
Yesterday’s news with the new Home Secretary suggesting that the British cafe culture has “failed to materialise” with the passing of 24 hour licensing legislation alone will surprise few. With the Home Office also publishing the depressing statistic of there being almost one million alcohol related crimes last year, it has surely become clear that a change in legislation alone has done little to change the way we consume alcohol in Britain.
So legislation won’t do it. That, I guess leaves individual behavioural change, and more dauntingly an entire anthropological shift in Britain’s approach to alcohol consumption. But is this a uniquely British problem? As I say, it’s easy after enjoying a carefree holiday to magnify everything wrong with your home town, but is it the reality, or is our sense further skewed by a collective media hand-wringing lamenting our supposed inexorable national moral decline? (referred to in this excellent ICE blog)
Certainly findings by the Social Issues Research Centre suggest a complex set of cultural, historical, and social influences on countries’ approaches to alcohol consumption. The SIRC suggests that “there is enormous cross-cultural variation in the way people behave when they drink”, citing, as you might expect, the UK, along with Scandinavia, the US and Australia, as cultures with strong associations between drinking and violent or anti-social behaviour, with others such as Mediterranean (and I’d suggest a good chunk of mainland Western European) cultures experiencing relatively harmonious experiences of social drinking.
This, it is further suggested, is related to differing cultural beliefs about alcohol, and, significantly (and ICE’s experience would certainly strongly infer) the perceived and pervading social norms around alcohol behaviour in various cultures.
The SIRC goes on to cite research suggesting an actual correlation between countries that drink the most having less incidences of alcohol related problems per capita (France and Italy being given as examples), than those with below average consumption (Ireland –apparently – and Iceland given as examples).
So, as certainly our experience in dealing with alcohol related issues certainly would suggest, social norms play a huge role in alcohol consumption behaviour, and this apparently works on a much wider national level. Surely this would suggest that no government can ever legislate for a continental style cafe drinking culture while such perceived social norms are so prevalent and are, for better or worse, so continually reinforced by the media, the market, and peer groups, as much as we would care to wish it so?
But maybe it goes deeper than even that. Maybe we’re just unhappy. Maybe also of course, this is an argument that goes much further than the subject matter of this post (is that a tin opener on the vessel with the word “worms” written on it I can see?). However, in the words of Desmond “Naked Ape” Morris, “there is absolutely no truth in the idea that alcohol helps you ‘drown your sorrows’. If you are sorrowful to start with, you will only sink deeper into despair as the night wears on.” Morris’s idea of alcohol as an “inhibitor or inhibitions” that “whatever the dominant mood of the drinker,…will exaggerate it by removing the usual social constraints…if the drinker is sad, he becomes sadder” maybe points to an underlying national malaise. The 2006 UNICEF report suggesting children in the UK are the unhappiest in the developed world would seem to add further fuel to that particular fire.
In an ocean of “whys” and “maybes” around this most entrenched of issues, there’s surely the need for ever increasing engagement and in-depth conversations with people to understand further what goes through British people’s minds on the way to, and from, the pub, Off Licence, or street corner.
Only then can any form of basis be formed for the generational shift that may be required before we too can confidently enjoy that outdoor beer in a nice cold frosted glass to the dulcet tones of the Oompah band.
What do you think? What are the reasons for the huge differences between the UK and continental drinking experience? Are the differences all that significant in reality? Do we just have a rose-tinted view of sunnier places? Why not take 5 minutes to pour yourself another Orange and Cranberry J2O and ponder….
