dark star brewery

Good to see Brighton's own Dark Star Brewery listed in the Guardian's list of the top ten UK microbreweries. Ace. Here's what the Grauniad says:

Dark Star Brewery – Evening Star Brighton

When the Evening Star became a freehouse in 1992 the owner converted half the cellar into a microbrewery. When demand grew the brewery moved to nearby Ansty but still supplies the pub with it's golden Hophead bitter (3.8%) as well as rotating Dark Star beers. You'll also find a choice of real ciders and international bottled beers. A short hop away from Brighton Station, it's often missed by the visiting crowds heading down to the seafront. Also handy for catching the last train back to London if you're on a day trip to the coast. Look out for its one-batch-a-year Critical Mass (7.2%) Christmas ale - sure to get you singing Fairytale Of New York in the manner of Shane MacGowan himself.

• eveningstarbrighton.co.uk, 55/56 Surrey Street, Brighton, BN1 3PB, +44 (0)1273 328931.

Thirsty now.

jenga dog

Possibly I have too much time on my hands.

szimpka kert, budapest

Rather than soak an experience in and then think about it, analyse it, write about it later, I'm going to have a go at transcribing my thoughts about the latest chapter in my Budapest adventure as I experience it, so consequently I'm crouched over my iPhone while I should be drinking in my surroundings. On the other hand, I am sitting in the pitch black.

A couple of people have mentioned Budapest's ruin pubs to me since I arrived, but it took my friend Laura recommending Szimpla Kert to me to get me in the door of one of them. The ruin pubs are essentially ad-hoc bars created in the space of one of the city's many ruined buildings. In Szimpla's case, it is housed inside a crumbling mansion, a haphazard sequence of rooms, some without proper ceilings, and a huge courtyard in the centre of District VII, the pock-marked, culturally rich part of the city that proved to be first a haven and then a prison for the Jews of Hungary during the thirties and forties.

Everything inside the pub is delapidated and decaying, but the extent to which the space, and the objects within it, have been repurposed is absolutely staggering. Each room has it's own character and is as cosy as the last, even if some are filled with broken chairs, upturned bathtubs and old televisions. The space I'm sat in the at the moment contains 13 of the latter, suspended from the ceiling, each showing a gradually evolving psychedelic image. Apart from the TV's, there is no lighting. So until one's eyes adjust, one is basically sitting in the dark. The room opposite, by way of contrast, is just a few seats and a wall, upon which films are projected. To my left, dimly visible through the archway, a room with ivy snaking across the mesh roof.I've really never been anywhere quite like this before - it is the comfiest, richest, most dramatic and at the same time most basic pub I've ever frequented.

It's absolutely wonderful, in short.

fireworks for obama

Whose idea was it to schedule Bonfire Night the day after the American election? Really bad timing; I think after staying up ‘til five o’clock last night any participation in the festivities tonight would be bordering on suicidal. Ordinarily I watch the fireworks at Hove Cricket Ground, which are always reliably ace, and do so from the considerable comfort of Dave and Eleanor’s balcony, but this year the option is nixed as Dave has rather inconsiderately moved out and I keep meaning and failing to catch up with the elusive Eleanor. I did weigh up the thought of watching it on the cold grass inside the stadium, but after last night’s excess and excitement, that appeals rather less. So tonight the emphasis is on warmth and an early night, possibly with a few fireworks glimpsed through the skylight.

The election, of course, was wonderful. Dan, Sam and myself convened on Ant’s new flat for a delicious Roast dinner and wiled away the pre-election hours by listening to Throbbing Gristle and watching the telly on mute. Adverts, in particular, were a delight; no matter how bucolic or serene it may otherwise be, no advert can survive a soundtrack of the Gristle’s ‘His Arm Was Her Leg’ without being rendered impossibly sinister.

That done, we dashed over to the Shakespeare’s Head for a few drinks before retreating to the flat to watch Obama romp home. Of course, it took a bloody age, and we ran so completely out of alcohol that we were driven to contact Brighton's own Booze Brothers (men who deliver alcohol to drunks in the middle of the night) who, sadly, were otherwise engaged, leading Sam to make the desperate decision to race back to Compton Avenue to get some more wine. By about half four or so it was unarguably clear that Obama had won, and we watched with glee as the last States fell. It was a genuinely amazing, delightful thing to witness and watching I felt privileged, as if I were an actor in the drama unfolding, simply by virtue of being able to look on and cheer. Hurrah for Obama.

Have a lovely Bonfire night.

east village colour

This won't look very good in the narrow confines of my blog template, but below is a set of photographs I've stitched together; the subject is a long wall in Manhattan's East Village, culminating in a little pub (shown above) called The Mars Bar. Click on the long image and it should show you a close up.

roman rock in hanover

After a Friday night drinking in Seven Dials, last night we decided to undertake an expedition over to Hanover for a drink with some friends who are based over that way, and strolled along to The Constant Service, a nice, fairly quiet pub halfway up the sharp slope of Brighton's most villagey district. Walking in we noted, however, a drum kit and guitar amp sat in the corner room and, anticipating a lot of noise, made our way out - via the bar, where for some reason we were made to barter beer prices - to the pub garden.

Mark and Lou were giggling. "Did you see their name on the kick drum?", Mark asked.

I shook my head.

"The Brown Stripes", Lou told me.

After half an hour or so of drinking in the balmy air, we realised that a band were taking to the stage inside. I glanced into the window, and saw a middle-aged man striding on stage dressed as a Roman centaurian. I blinked, and glanced at my beer. The drummer followed him on, dressed identically.

We watched through the glass, and began to look at each other, exchanging surprised glances.

"They're dressed as Romans", James said.

"They do seem to be dressed as Romans, yes", I agreed.

"Look, even the sandals", noted Lou.

"Sandals are very fashionable", Mark replied, knowledgably, "I read it in the Guardian".

The band started up and played for about two hours; enthusiastic cover versions of rock standards, TV theme-tunes and a rather wonderful cover of 'America, Fuck Yeah', from the crude but very funny Team America: World Police film, which they recalibrated into a song that went:

"Hanover!
Fuck yeah!"

I wonder if they ever play in Seven Dials. Do they skip this one?

Once or twice we venture in to go to the bar, and note with alarm that the place is full of very enthusiastic audience members.

I muse that my band was never received with such gleeful abandon, and order another drink.

Whitelocks, Leeds

A slightly overdue post, this, but I thought I'd take a break from blogging about Brighton in order to dodge backwards in time and reflect a little more on my recent trip to Leeds. In particular, to laud one of the best pubs I've ever been to, the wonderful Whitelocks, which is located down a narrow lane in the centre of the city.

I shan't bore you with a history lesson, but... oh alright, but just a quick one. A listed pub, Whitelocks (which was originally called The Turk's Head) was first granted a license in 1715, and while it may have changed a fair bit since then, it retains the essence of a proper English public house. It's dark, ornate and friendly, serving a wonderful selection of cask ales, beautifully decorated, and pulsing with life as if it were the very heart of Leeds. Although if the wall murals outside are anything to go by, it is a Leeds which is greatly changed.

Sitting with a pint of ale one afternoon on my recent trip I was interrupted by a passing customer, who needed me to move a chair so that his wheelchair could continue through the pub. Engaging him in conservation, it transpired that he had drunk in the pub after the war, and he was visibly touched to see that so little had changed. Despite his advanced years, he was as sharp as a needle, looking for ornamental details and signs of permanence and finding plenty to delight him. He had been an artist and explained that he had drawn the inside of the pub from exactly where I was sitting. I was moved and happy to be sat in a place so tangible and real, so resistent to change.

I heartily recommend a visit next time you're in Leeds.

local flavour

I don't mind making mistakes so long as they are, if not universal, commonly made ones. Who of us, after all, has not supped a pint of Cypriot-brewed lager on an orange skied coast and exclaimed "this beer is fucking gorgeous. It's Cypriot beer for me from now on".

Exactly, all of us.

Sitting in bars on a similarly idyllic range Croation beaches and harbours, I've knocked back plenty of Lasko this week, and enjoyed it hugely, hugging the thick pint glass to myself in the afternoon sun. I had a long day today, however, and thought to myself, 'I'll just grab a couple of beers from the supermarket and drink them in front of BBC World in my room'. So I bought 2 cans of Lasko Pivo, branded 'Zlatorog', the beer which I think I've been drinking with abandon all week in the cheerful Adriatic sun.

God Almighty!

It took about six reluctant sips and a good deal of sniffing to work out what exactly this particular Croation beer brought to mind. Taste? Good old fashioned vinegar. Smell? Much more interesting - I eventually pegged it, incredibly accurately, as soy sauce. Unbelievably, unforgivably bad. Wow. Straight down the sink.

Will I drink more of it by the harbour during my lunch break tomorrow? I wouldn't bet against it.

american beer

The first pint of beer I had in San Jose was a glass of San Francisco-brewed Anchor Steam Beer, which is a highly unusual, spicy lager/pale ale combo of real richness and taste. It's slightly less fizzy than a European lager, and a deep orange, coppery colour with a flat, creamy head. It's very malty and spicy, containing a strong hint of burnt caramel and biscuits, and has a strong, bitter aftertaste. Very crisp and extremely nice - my first job back in England is to hunt this down.

It perhaps helped that myself and Sam sat drinking it in the Californian sunshine.

Next up was a pint of Samuel Adams Boston Lager, which was similar in feel but lighter and less bitter, perhaps slightly more carbonated but retaining the rich hoppiness of the Anchor Steam. Rather sweeter and milder, and easier to drink, but much less individual.

Finally, last night I had a Sierra Nevada with my meal, but couldn't really place it or differentiate it from the drinks I had before - but will come back to it if I have another glass.

Assistant Blog - bringing you the most important news from America, as it happens.

chicago reading

Once I get through the customs and security at Chicago (shoes, coat, belt off), I find myself, having rushed prematurely, with space to explore. I'm dog-tired, but the aforementioned exhileration, until now dormant under the surface, springs joyfully to life and I dash down from the landing gate, having calculated I have thirty minutes spare, to Chicago airport's book shop. I bury my nose (metaphorically, just) in the strange scented, differently weighted books of America. First I rush to the fiction stand, to examine my favourite books in new, unseen editions, and then I spring back to the bestseller table.

I've heard various things about the US book market, and won't for a moment, on the strength of a couple of visits, years apart, pretend to know anything much about it. Friends from the US have told me how astonished they are, on British public transport, to see so many people reading books. On the other hand, standing in this Illinois bookshop, I'm taken aback by the quality of the top ten on offer; serious fiction by Philip Roth, books by Democratic party hopefuls and several tracts on the Middle East and Government policy. The new book by Dave Eggers, which is about a refugee from the Sudanese war, which I excitedly buy, is placed bang in the centre of the new releases table.

My heart thudding with excitement, relaxing in and exploring this enthralling shop, I forget completely my extreme tiredness and lose myself in a flurry of pro-Americanism, deciding that I can't live in England any longer and must move to the States forthwith. I rush back to the gate, book in hand, and throw myself onto a seat at a little bar sat beside it. A sign warns me that all customers will be ID'd, which send me into a jetlagged panic of amusement. The barman comes over, and, wanting to look dead adult, I splutter "A Bugweiser, please'.

He looks stern. "A what?"

"A Busweiger", I reply, all nerves and tiredness. I show him, pre-emptively, my ID.

Mixed praise

It's always flattering to be described as a lovely boy, which I now have been, over on Ali's ace new Split Down The Middle blog, but I wasn't altogether sure that such a nice bit of praise was entirely compatible with Ali's realisation, shortly after she started drinking with me, Dave and Dan, that "boys believe what they want to believe, regardless of the facts, or the measured opinion of friends, or the niggling doubts, or anything. If they want to convince themselves that something is acceptible to do, they will do it". Having provided her with such an insight into the workings of a man's mind, we should perhaps hand back the plaudits and hang our heads in shame.

Had a cool evening though - me and Dave met up there after work and downed a couple of pints, although the speed with which we drank them was dictated not so much by drunken enthusiasm (it was Monday night, after all) but rather by the fact that Dave, glancing down at a chili pepper nestling in our bowl of olives, wondered aloud "do you think that's hot?", and then decided to find out. Dave is a blonde bombshell with a fine, pale beard which is only visible in good light, but if you ever want to see it, the trick is to feed him a chili pepper. His face turns purple and his beard is suddenly visible. Ace. I've never seen someone drink a pint of guiness so fast. The olives were hot, too, egged on and contaminated.

As Ali intimates, the theme for the evening's discussion was social, and socio-sexual (whatever that is) embarrasment, so we traded stories of little slips, mistakes, ill-judged comments, that feeling of waking up still quarter-cut in the morning and having to cycle through an evening of memories to recollect the moment when you allowed one blip to colour the evening - you forgot someone's name, or said something too loud, or did something transparent which your companions saw through, and laughed about. These are tiny things, but they're somehow almost as agonising as the big problems. I always fixate back on the slightest things, and if I don't remember them I conclude I've just forgotten. "Did I make a complete idiot of myself at your house last night?", I think of asking.

Dan and Ali had plenty more stories. When we looked up, it was after twelve and the remnants of our pints were being confiscated. Bah.

DBC Pierre and the Aztecs

Don't get me wrong, I love Michael Palin's travel programmes - they do a superb job of chronicling distant lands in amazing insightful detail. But where, if you sent Michael Palin to Mexico and asked him to research the Aztecs, he would talk of feathered serpents and folk mythology with a very BBC sense of ironic detachment, it's a great pleasure to watch DBC Pierre deliver the same lines, the same portents of dread, dead straight to camera with reverent seriousness. Palin may return from the Himalayas enthused, but he doesn't come back possessed. Actually, Pierre looks possessed at the beginning of his journey, never mind the end, if only by Mexican firewater, but it makes his 'The Last Aztec', a channel 4 film which I caught repeated on More4 tonight, brilliantly enjoyable.

A lot of TV history seems intent on proving which civilisation was the best or the strongest or most civilised - Egypt or Greece, Roman or Aztec. Certainly any sense of journalistic impartiality is absent in Pierre's film - he points out that "while we as a culture were chucking shit out of windows into alleys in London, these people had drainage, they had courts, they were living off spring water and vegetables. While we were dying of the plague and scraping around in the grime, these folk were wandering like gods". He reveres the glorious and magical history of the Aztecs.

Again, unlike Palin or his fellow TV journalist contemporaries, Pierre refuses to conform to type. For a start it's quickly clear, through a combination of his appearance and his driving, that our host is absolutely trashed. In truth, despite the historical content, the film is really a gonzo road movie in which Pierre's passion takes centre stage as recalls his childhood in Mexico city, the stories that fuel his imagination, and explores his thesis that the heart of Aztec Mexico is still throbbing hard under the surface of the capital city.

And indeed it is, literally - wherever tears appear in the world's largest city, he shows us, the ruins of the Aztec empire are exposed, and we watch archaologists uncovering sacred grounds, the bodies of Aztec children and shards of Aztec stone. This most spectacular civilisation, Pierre reminds us, was carved by a stone age society. Indeed, without not only steel, but also without wheels. He finds the place, locked away behind an iron gate, where Cortes, the Spanish usurper, met Moctezuma first - he was welcomed not as an invader but as a God. Once more, Palin might film the spot through the gate. Not DBC Pierre - he just bribes a policeman and gets in that way.

So, allowed in as Gods, the Spanish took the Aztec Empire, and Moctezuma was stoned by his own people for letting them down. Pierre is intent on mourning the collapse of the civilisation which inspires him so. "There's only one way to get over the decline and collapse of an empire", he tells us sourly, sitting in a seedy bar. "And that's to get completely lashed ". He throws back a tequila, shaking his head, looking around. "I can't say it feels any better". So he has another.

Incensed, he decides to take the Palace back for the Aztecs. He is approached by a local, outside. "Do I want an official tour?", he says disdainfully, preparing to storm the place, "what the fuck is that?". He banters with the guard on the gate, but gets no further. By now, anyway, his misanthropy knows no bounds, so what does he do? He drinks lots more, he reminisces about a dead girlfriend and the centrality of death in the Mexican character, and goes out at night looking for fresh corpses. When he finds some, he takes photos. By now I am thinking this is surely one of the oddest bits of TV I've ever come across. Back in the daylight, pissed, he wanders into a church, lights up, and starts rambling about Dracula.

Mexico, he tells us, has dreamt up a unique cocktail of death-fascination, where the pre-Spanish culture of death worship has combined with the Christian concept of mortality. He asks a priest about it, making sure he mentions Christians ripping the hearts from still-living children in the process. Yet Aztec magic still holds sway, and as Pierre decides he wants to climb a mountain to find the resting place of Moctezuma, he realises that he had better have his soul cleansed first. He buys some dried hummingbirds, for starters. It will ward off curses, apparently.

The Sierra Madras mountains are his destination, a magical realm, and he starts his climb, intent on finding spirits, "secrets from the past", living remnants of the Aztec world, and gold. Most people, as he climbs, are too frightened to talk of the spirits. Pierre has been here before, actually, and he seems scared too - after all, he points out, "the last time I left this valley, many years ago, my life went hurtling into a downward spiral from which I've only just recovered". He keeps climbing anyway.

But, just in case, he sacrifices a couple of chickens first. By the time's that done, he's "as clean as a whistle", he says, "a poet". And he needs to be cleansed. "There are many things that happen to you, physically and emotionally", he says, "which leave a smudge". The bit where the first chicken is beheaded - with kitchen scissors - is horrifying. And after all that, standing in the swirling mist, Pierre is still too scared to climb the mountain. So he gets absolutely slaughtered again, then turns back: the gonzo journo who turns back! Give him another beer and he'll do it, I was shouting.

For all that, an exhilarating programme.

pub games

I'm afraid I can't remember the name of the game, but each week when we finish a fun and fairly drink-sodden pub quiz at The George, we pass around several pieces of paper and a bunch of biros and begin playing a drawing game. The rules are that each person writes a sentence and passes the paper to the next person, who draws what they see. They then fold over the paper so that the original caption is not visible and the next person along writes down what they see. Then, in turn, the next person draws the caption, and so on...

The following sequence, appropriately given that Dan didn't have any cash him on last night, started with the following sentence. You can follow the evolution through.

"Dan drank pint after pint and jonathan paid for it all, and felt cheated".

From that, the next person in the line extrapolated the following:

"Dan is getting pissed on Jonathan's money and Jonathan doesn't like it".

Pictorially represented as...


then:

"Dan continuously drinks beer Jonathan has bought for him without acknowledging the pain this causes".


And finally:

"Jonathan dares Dan to just keep drinking as usual".

We rarely get to the end of the sequence without hideously distoring the meaning, so we were pretty proud of that. And the story has a happy ending, too, as Dan is a decent sort and bought me lunch today.

another night in the tin drum

Had a nice evening last night helping Dave to forget that it was his birthday (not that he needn't much help, having already misinformed people of the date a few days earlier) and lounging around at the Tin Drum in Seven Dials, which has started being a bit of a home from home lately, which is surely yet more evidence that as we age we begin to gravitate towards more sophisticated and adult destinations on a night out. On the other hand, it could be just because it's kind of in the middle of where we all live.

And the night was mightily enlivened by the presence of the coolest birthday card in history, which depicted Dave in a variety of romantic situations with friends, a kind of candid scrapbook of alarming photographs, including one which showed him blowing a kiss at Dustin, and one where he and I could be glimpsed staringly lovingly into each other's eyes. Hmm. It was made by Natalia, obviously, and was as such adorned with stickers of birds and - because, I can only assume, she had run out of birds - a solitary bee.

A typical birthday present from Nat may be a beauty product sampler she found in a magazine, but she makes excellent birthday cards.

Some more half-remembered moments:

1. Being unable to get served Leffe in a stylish Leffe glass. Everyone else gets the satisfying bowl shaped receptacle. I get a sturdy half-pint glass, as if they are saying "don't give the easily broken glass to the idiot with the side parting".

2. Victoria blinding everyone with the triple-flash on my digital camera. I complained that I could see two big rectangles in front of my eyes. "They're your glasses", says Michi.

3. The third reason we go to the Tin Drum, on the other hand, might be because of the bar staff. Yes, the service is a bit on the slow side, but I get the distinct feeling that if talk continues to centre on arguments as to the conflicting merits of the blonde barmaid and the brunette, I fear that me, Dan and Dave will be going to the pub on our own while Nat and Vic engineer a more cultured night out of their own instead.

4. Noticing the drinks piling up in front of a cheerful Dave. Exchanging rounds of 'cheers' and clinking glasses takes a lot longer when the bugger is accumulating glasses of Jack Daniels and pints of Staropramen like they were going out of fashion. And best of all, I think I managed not to buy him one, which was a heroic bit of tight-fistedness (but not deliberate).

5. The toilets are situated upstairs at the Tin Drum. On the way back down to the bar, there is a door frame, half way down the stairs, which is just begging to be grabbed and used as a climbing frame. Last night I grabbed it and hanged there for a moment, enjoying the feeling, before the aforementioned pretty barmaid appeared at the bottom of the stairs and was confronted by the sight of me suspended, flapping my little legs, like a badly trained monkey. Hmm. Not sure that did my rep much good.

Ah well.

half a bottle of wine is nothing

Shocking news from the Daily Mail today - Keira Knightly, it seems, drinks half a bottle of wine every night!!!! Shock horror!

Sorry, doesn't everyone?

late night licensing in brighton part one

Non-Brighton residents might want to skip this one:

The Albert, 48 Trafalgar Street - 11pm every night
Aquarium, 11 Steine Street - Weekdays 12am, weekends 1am
Barley Mow, 92 St Georges Road - 11pm every night
Basketmakers Arms, 12 Gloucester Road - Sun to Weds 11pm, Thurs to Sat 12am
Bath Arms, 3 Meeting House Lane - Sun to Weds 12am, Thurs to Sat 1am
Battle of Trafalgar, Guildford Road - Sun to Thurs 11pm, Fri and Sat 12am
Bedford Tavern, 30 Western Street - 12am every night
Black Lion, 14 Black Lion Street - Weekdays 2am, weekends 3am
Browns, 3-4 Dukes Street - Thurs to Fri 12pm, Sun to Weds 11pm
Caxton Arms, North Gardens - 11pm every night
Chequers Bar, 45 Preston Street - Sun to Weds 12am, Thurs to Sat 1am
Chimney House, 28 Upper Hamilton Road - Tues to Sat 11pm, Sun 9pm, closed Mon
The Couch, 82 Dyke Road - Sun to Thurs 12am, Fri and Sat 1am
The Crescent, 6 Clifton Hill - Sun to Thurs 11pm, Fri and Sat 12am
Cricketers, 15, Black Lion Street - Sun to Thurs 11pm, Fri and Sat 12am
Doctor Brightons, 16 Kings Road - Sun to Thurs 12am, Fri and Sat 1am
The Dragon, 58 St Georges Road - 11pm every night
The Druid Arms, 79 Ditchling Road - 12am every night
Druid's Head, 9 Brighton Place - Sun to Thurs 1am, Fri and Sat 3am
Duke of Beaufort, 175 Queens Road - 11pm every night
The Eagle, 125 Gloucester Road - Sun to Thurs 12am, Fri and Sat 1am
The Earth & Stars, 46 Windsor Street - Mon to Thurs 12am, Fri and Sat 1am, Sun 11pm
Easy Bar, 10 Cranbourne Street - Weekdays 1am, weekends 2am
The Engineer, 32 Argyle Road - Sun to Thurs 12am, Fri and Sat 1am
Evening Star, 55 Surrey Street - Sun to Thurs 11pm, Fri and Sat 12am
The Fiddlers Elbow, 11 Boyces Street - Weekdays 12am, weekends 2am
The Font, Union Street - Sun 10.30pm, Mon to Weds 11pm, Thurs 12am, Fri and Sat 1am
Fortune of War, 157 Kings Rd Arches - Weekdays 11pm, weekends 2am
The Freebutt, 1 Phoenix Place - Sun to Thurs 11pm, Fri and Sat 1am
The George, 5 Trafalgar Street - Mon to Thurs 11pm, Fri and Sat 12am, Sun 11.30pm
The Golden Cannon, 21 St George's Road - Sun to Thurs 11pm, Fri and Sat 1am
Grand Central, Surrey Street - Weekdays 12am, weekends 1am
The Great Eastern, 103 Trafalgar Street - Sun to Tues 11pm, Weds and Thurs 12am, Fri and Sat 12.30am
Greens, 62 West Street - Sun to Weds 12am, Thurs to Sat 1.30am
The Hanbury, St Georges Road - 11pm everynight (The Venue up to 2am)
The Hobgoblin, 31 York Place - Sun to Thurs 12am, Fri and Sat 2am
Horatio's Bar, Palace Pier - 11pm every night
Lion and Unicorn, Sussex Street - Sun 10.30pm, Mon to Sat 11pm
The Lord Nelson, 36 Trafalgar Street - 11pm
Marine Tavern, 13 Broad Street - 12am every night
Market Inn, 1 Market Street - Fri and Sat 1am
Montepelier Inn, Montepelier Place - Sun to Thurs 12am, Friday and Sat 1am
Pedestrian Arms, 13 Foundry Street - Sun to Thurs 12am, Fri and Sat 12.30am
Polar East, St Georges Road - Weekdays 12am, weekends 1am
Pond, Gloucester Road - Mon to Sat 11pm, Sun 10.30pm
Prodigal, 80 East Street - Mon to Weds 11pm, Thurs 11.30pm, Fri and Sat 12am, Sun 11.30pm
Pull & Pump, 1-2 Clarence Gardens - Sun to Weds 11pm, Thurs 11.30pm, Fri and Sat 12.30am
R Bar, Marine Parade - Mon to Thurs 2am, possibly 24 hours Fri to Mon
Robin Hood, Norfolk Terrace - Sun 11.30pm, Mon to Thurs 12am, Fri and Sat 12.30am
Royal Albion Roof Terrace, Royal Albion Hotel, 35 Old Stein - residents only after 11pm
Royal Sovereign, Preston Street - Sun 11.30pm, Mon to Weds 11pm, Thurs to Sat 12.30am
Setting Sun, Windmill Street - Sun 11.30pm, Mon to Weds 11pm, Thurs to Sat 12am
Volks Tavern, Maderia Drive - Fri and Sat 3am, 24 hr licence for Bank Holidays
Walkabout Inn, 79-81 West Street - 1am every day
Wetherspoons, 20 - 22a West Street - Sun to Thurs 12am, Fri and Sat 2am

magical disinhibiting powers

Today the Observer says that Paul Evans, an American 'super-cop' brought in by the Home Office to cut Britain's crime rate warned last night that

"the nation's binge drinking culture was spiralling out of control and fuelling an epidemic of violence outside pubs and clubs that threatened to overwhelm the police."

Ah, well, we've heard that before, even if we know it's probably true. But I read in the Guardian yesterday a more interesting article which went some way to factoring me into the equation, where previously I thought,

"binge drinkers, eh, tut tut".

According to new research, the system by which we measure our alcohol intake is hopelessly outdated - for example, since 1985 the average pub-bought glass of wine is 50ml larger and on average 5% stronger. We're told that a unit represents one glass of wine or half a pint. In fact, a standard glass of wine in a pub is now accurately measured at 2.3 units. A pint of Stella is 3.

And if you - like me - regularly go out and drink three pints of lager then guess what? You're a binge drinker too. And if you do it every night then you are a chronic drinker, you statistic, you.

Best paragraph in the article was, however, less sobering...

The timelessness of our desire to get drunk has led anthropologists such as Kate Fox, director of the Social Issues Research Centre in Oxford, to speculate about the British character. She concluded that we are all suffering from a "congenital sociability disorder", a disease whose symptoms are akin to a kind of autism combined with agoraphobia. In plain talk, the British are uniquely buttoned up and starched stiff. Animal watcher Desmond Morris says that if we were monkeys we would be picking imaginary fleas out of each other's fur, in an act of "social grooming", a pretext for prolonging social encounters. Instead we have for centuries propped up the bar.

A national characteristic has been identified in numerous scientific trials. In one, British volunteers were plied with drinks, all purporting to be alcohol, half of which were placebos. Everyone became equally loud, crude and garrulous, the technically sober behaving identically to the genuinely drunk. Similar tests carried out on volunteers from Mediterranean countries found no such associations. Scientists concluded that British people invested alcohol with "magical disinhibiting powers".

God, that's so true.