27-06-2020, 21:26
When I was a licensee, there definitely came a noticeable point (around 2008/09) when a whole crop of eighteen-year-olds didn't actually know how to act in pubs, because the draconian ID laws and Challenge 21 stuff that had come in a few years earlier had prevented them from doing their underage drinking in a properly supervised environment. In my day, we started drinking in some pretty rough Wednesbury boozers when we were 16, and were quiet as mice the whole time because we were scared shitless. Which isn't a bad way of doing things, if you accept that teens are always going to collide headlong with alcohol at some point or another, and that it's just a case of making it a controlled collision.
"I would rather spend a holiday in Tuscany than in the Black Country, but if I were compelled to choose between living in West Bromwich or Florence, I should make straight for West Bromwich." - J.B. Priestley