Baby, It's Cold Inside

In these difficult and expensive - and it has to be said this winter -  bloody cold - times, it is rather pleasant to leave the dank and chill of our underheated homes and head for the conviviality of our nearest pub. How satisfying it is to turn the heating down, head for the door and spend the saved money in a venue where the price of your chosen drink includes you being nice and toasty while you sup your amber nectar.

Or is it?  The problem of affording heating at home, alas, cannot with certainty be avoided by jumping ship to your nearest boozer. Like Doc Morrissey in the Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin, you may well find that they have it worse.  You see, unlike us lucky sods at home, who have at least some limits applied to our energy supply, your local pub is entirely subject to the vagaries of the market and the various commercial contracts that they have entered into. In short, the price of heating pubs has gone up considerably.

Recently in the cold weather, I have noticed some pubs, quite frankly, to be more than a tad chilly.  Now this is a problem. Nobody likes a cold pub, and not many of us will sit in one for a long time. Being cold when out spending your hard-earned is hardly an agreeable experience, and while it isn't difficult to sympathise with the situation pubs find themselves in, it is yet another disincentive to visit. We have quite a few of those already.

Yesterday in Manchester, two out of the three pubs I was in while celebrating my 25,000 days alive - I won't be doing that again - were actually cold.  So cold in one that my wife refused to allow a further drink, as she was perishing. In this case, it was not helped by a door at the rear to the courtyard was left open by smokers as they nipped in and out. With a door at the other end admitting customers, it made for an icy through draught from the sub-zero temperatures outside. While the radiators were feebly doing their best, it was a losing battle, and in any case they didn't seem to be that hot anyway. Our earlier experience in a very large venue wasn't much better, though they did have a huge space to heat, nor was the small restaurant where we tried to enjoy a meal. I'd call that a trend.

So, what's to be done? Well, hard to say. Pubs could put prices up, as I, for one, would rather the drinks cost a bit more than be cold inside the pub. They could also ensure that their pubs are as draughtproof as possible, but whatever, in a cold winter like this, something needs to be done.

For me, I reckon if it is cold inside the pub, I'll just be voting with my feet and go elsewhere. I'm too old to be suffering over a pint.

It has to be said that you are less likely to encounter cold pubs in the managed estate of breweries and  of course, busy pubs do generate human heat, so a bustling and busy pub is also likely to be warmer.

Not much chance of warming up on the bus on the way home either. The shocking state of our buses makes a warm bus a real rarity