Whatever Happened To British Reserve?

As the wife of a British man and the mother of two half-British children, I am yet still glad we live in America after reading this review of the British New Year's Eve Celebrations from The Daily Mail.

Disgusting.

Appalling.

Sad.

The thing of it is, most British will blame Tony Blair for changing the pub hours rather than were the blame truly belongs - on British Youth and their parents for not raising them better.

Now we've all made stupid choices but you can not find a British social commentator that condones this boozy excess in Britain. But I do not believe that the change of pub hours is to blame. It was the limiting of pub hours during WWI that created a culture shift.

I've been out drinking in London pubs with my husband and his friends before the change in hours and was astonished at the pattern of behavior. We met at 6pm at the pub and started drinking pints. No dinner. No bar snacks. Just drinking steadily for hours until last call when I suddenly found myself surrounded by full pint glasses and everyone at our table trying to pound as many pints of lager as possible in 10 minutes.

Then and only then at 11pm did we pour out of the pub and hit the local Indian restaurant for a curry dinner and more lager.

American's don't drink that way and we have even more liberal bar hours than Britian. Why?

Because we eat. Many bars are required by law to serve food. Americans do not feel rushed to drink as much as they can swallow because we know we have all night to drink. So we eat dinner first and then hit the bar. Even after drinking and dancing all night long at a club, we would swing by the local all-night diner for a breakfast before going to bed.

The British don't do that because they had become accustom to severely limited drinking hours and no food served in the pubs. This is changing but until the British change their ways, this sort of behavior will continued, long hours or short.