24 Hour Party People

Flashback November 2005--We were all a few years younger and prettier then, the housing market was still booming with no sign of decline and irritating middle class real estate magnates were annoying the crap out of the rest of us with reality t.v. shows like 'Property Ladder', 'How Renovated is your Property?', the 'Property Owner's Den', 'I'm a Property Owner, Get Me Out of Here', and 'Property Property Property Property, Oh, Man, Property'.

November 2005 was a bountiful year, there was a Yankee cap for every chav who mulled outside Top Shop, a matrix-stylee jacket for every emo, and tight high-cropped tops combined with skin-tight jeans caused exposed rolls of fat squeezed out from the outfit creating the 'Muffin Tops' craze which my wife found so appalling, especially when I wore it out in public.  The Puppet Theatre was still being funded, and the Puppet Man was still in his early experimental stages and hadn't yet reached his 'Elvis' phase.  It was a time of innocence, when you could still by a liter of petrol for less than a pound, and the old timers gathered in pubs  to smoke like chimneys and talk about how much better it was in 2001, or even '97. At the risk of overgeneralizing, everything was much, much better and simpler then than it is now.

Then came the 24-Hour Licensing Laws.

I, personally, thought it was a welcome relief.  Say you go out on a Saturday night with friends, hit a pub, start having a good conversation, and would actually like to continue it beyond 11p.m. in a place that doesn't vibrate with bad drum and bass so much it causes massive structural damage to the building; it might be nice to have a place open till 1 or 2 where you don't have to outshout "Build Me Up Buttercup" blaring at 130db.

The licensing proposal spoken of in hissed, angry, but always quiet tones, the kind of voices hushed against doom, which whisper words like 'Cancer', 'Nuclear Winter, and 'A New Jeffery Archer Novel'.  The news was bleak--surely, if the 24-hour licensing laws were enacted, the nation was doomed.  The media proclaimed certain disaster--egged on by evil, mustached publicans, the youth, criminals, seedy characters, and shifty hedge fund managers would now be able to indulge their devilish appetites twenty-four hours a day.  Every day after these laws were enacted there would rioting on the streets, crime was expected to be increased by two thousand million percent, no one would go to work, and the property market would collapse due to poor construction by drunk builders.  The 24-Hour Licensing Laws were worse than Hurricane Katrina, the death of Pope John Paul II, and the war in Iraq combined.  This was sure to be the end of society as we know it.

I for one, was ready for the apocalypse.  I rushed out to the pubs the day the law was enacted, ready with my baseball cap turned sideways to help the youth loot, burn, and overturn cars, to join in the rioting and mayhem that was sure to follow, and to craw from pub to pub till six, as they removed their doors and opened twenty four hours a day, seven days a week.  This. Was. Liberation. Day.

And then, nothing happened.

The grand result of the hype, the panic, the press?  One or two pubs, which already sort of stayed open a little later than they should of (but hush, hush) officially changed their opening hours.  And just on weekends.  There were no riots.  I had to turn my cap back around, and still had to take it off in Orgasmic.  It was, like my love life, a lot of build up that was over before it got exciting.  Society carried on, unawares, and as far as I have been able to tell, in the three long years since that fateful November, 24-Hour Licensing Laws haven't made any difference at all.

And now they're up for renewal, and once again there's panic in the streets.  Apparently, while crime has not increased significantly overall, it's spread out over time, and while the Norwich papers have been filled with disturbing stories of people getting punched late at night, it's difficult to say whether the licensing laws are responsible for that or not, as so few pubs actually chose to stay open as late or later than clubs.  There were rumors of a mythical 24-hour pub in Norwich somewhere around December of aught five, but no one in my peer group was able to find it, and they are the kind of people who would.  Other than that, the pubs seem to be regulating themselves fairly well, and it's nice to have the option available to get a late night drink at a place not named 'Thump', or 'Throb', where people might make fun of my muffin tops.

Till Later,

W