Quaint Old English Customs #3: A Pint in the Pub on a Sunday Dinner

Quaint Old English Customs #3:
A Pint in the Pub on a Sunday Dinner
by Ian Wigley

This quaint old English custom has a history behind it. Back in the day (read: the 60s) it was a woman’s job to be a slave to the man’s needs. The man would go out and earn the money, working down the pit or on a building site, and the woman would stay at home, raise the children and cater for the man’s every need. This wasn’t the way it should be, it just was the way it always was, or in some cases still is.

Given the above, it was every red-blooded man’s god-given right to go out on a Sunday dinnertime (at about 12pm) and have a pint before his Sunday dinner (always a roast meat dinner with potatoes, two vegetables and gravy). Sunday dinnertimes were the same each Sunday, as regular as sunrise, and always a pleasure for the man.

A pint in the pub gave the man of the house a chance to spend time away from the wife, to spend time with other men of the same ilk, and to talk the talk without female intervention. It was more of a tradition than a custom, and it was a tradition that was cherished more in the north of England than the south. The north tends to have more integrity than the south over here, more old-fashioned values and ideals, and more down to earth.

So, twelve o’clock on a Sunday would come and the man of the house would make his way to the pub, money in pocket, safe in the knowledge there would be numerous other men doing just the same thing. Small communities would be formed within the pub as the same faces spotted each other and spoke, and eventually chatted and became friends. It was at this stage in the relationship that friendship groups emerged.

The older men in the pub, say aged 60+, always dressed up on Sundays, donning a shirt and tie, maybe a suit, but always trousers, never jeans. The older gents were proud, and they always made the effort to look smart on a Sunday; I think this goes back to times when people used to regularly attend church on a Sunday, and there was strong emphasis on looking smart in front of the vicar and the rest of the congregation. Some of the older men would wear the badges they won in the war; like I said, they were proud, and they wanted everyone to know this.

The conversations around the pub tables were about absolutely anything, but certain topics dominated, namely sport, and more specifically football, and how a man’s football team had fared the day before. There’s always been a link between pubs and football, the pub is the place most football supporters go before a game, and after a game in some cases. Men would mull over the Sunday newspapers, looking over the results pages and discussing the results of the Saturday football fixtures. All of this took place without a woman in sight.

The younger drinkers in the pub might have played Sunday morning football (a strange activity, basically a game of football where 22 men, generally hungover, kicked pieces out of each other). These drinkers would come into the pub after the game dressed in sports tops and tracksuit bottoms, looking tired and weary. A pint and a cigarette were delights for them, they’d just run themselves silly for 90 minutes, the best thing for them was a pint and a sit down, forget a salad and a glass of orange juice.

The Sunday morning pub footballers would sell raffle tickets and football cards to pub regulars to raise funds for their club. Many would also come back later that night to sell more tickets and host pie and peas suppers, once again to raise funds for their team. I have been part of this very activity myself. Sunday nights were fab when I played Sunday morning football, a healthy serving of pie, peas and gravy, enjoying the night with the regulars, and desperately using my boyish charms to shift raffle tickets.

The pub on a Sunday, for some drinkers, was a place of solace. A place to talk to each other about the failings of their marriage, the hardship of their job, and the problems they were encountering in terms of finance. It was often a place they could go to get away from their partners. The men would air their problems over a pint of John Smith’s, get things off of their chest, and then feel better about things when they eventually left the place. Sunday dinnertime drinking could almost be classed as therapy. You sorted out the ills of the world, and then you went home.

When the Sunday dinnertime drinker had done his drinking and socialising, it was time to go home (usually around 2pm) and sit down with the family at the dinner table and enjoy Sunday dinner. The week was at an end, and from here on out, for most, the rest of the day was spent preparing for the following week’s work, sitting down thinking the weekend was done, and being depressed knowing that ‘punching the clock’ was all that lie ahead for the next five days. For many, it was also time to sleep; the Sunday afternoon kip was a luxury and often a necessity. It recharged the body’s batteries, and it proved to be a time to sleep off the beer intake of a few hours before.

Today, the pub on a Sunday dinner is a very different place. No longer are pubs filled with just men on a Sunday dinner, women are almost always found there, with or without their husbands or partners. The emergence of the gastropub (a pub that sells food) has put paid to drinking with the boys, and then going home for a Sunday roast. The tradition has died a death, almost. Granted there are still pubs filled with elderly gents dressed in suits talking about the war, but never as many as there once was.

It’s a crying shame that such a custom, such a tradition, has died out. It’s the same as most things of old, they just die off. Perhaps it’s better not to dwell on such travesties, it only depresses us. Having said that, I’d kill for a time when the pub on a Sunday dinner was a place where friendship and friendship groups were built up, and the pub was a welcoming zone where we knew we could go, and be guaranteed a friendly face or nine, and a decent conversation or ten.

I know for certain that drinking establishments across the globe don’t offer the same environment of friendliness and camaraderie as the English pub did on a Sunday dinner, and that’s why I consider myself charmed to have experienced such an experience. Maybe I’m getting old, and enjoying hindsight, looking at the world through rose-tinted glasses. I don’t know. What I do know for certain is this – I’d love to turn the clock back and relive the times of old. You couldn’t whack Sunday dinnertimes in a warm, welcoming pub in England on a Sunday dinner.

Ian can be reached at ian@babblog.com.