[Drinking] Lunchtime Drinking (70s80s)

Hovegull · Oct 10, 2024

I was in a bar/restaurant earlier and two guys sat down with pints at 11am to drink during their business meeting…

When I first started work everyone used to go round to the pub at lunch for the full hour and have a liquid lunch…go back 4 pints later. Including all the managers.

Now the kids at work all drink Energy drinks, or protein drinks at lunch

South Stand Bonfire · Oct 10, 2024

Hovegull said:
I was in a bar/restaurant earlier and two guys sat down with pints at 11am to drink during their business meeting…

When I first started work everyone used to go round to the pub at lunch for the full hour and have a liquid lunch…go back 4 pints later. Including all the managers.

Now the kids at work all drink Energy drinks, or protein drinks at lunch

To be fair, the price of pub drinks compared to pay seemed to be a lot lot cheaper then compared to now.

Weststander · Oct 10, 2024

South Stand Bonfire said:
To be fair, the price of pub drinks compared to pay seemed to be a lot lot cheaper then compared to now.

It was. Fact.

GT49er · Oct 10, 2024

Peacehaven Wild Kids said:
Watching The Sweeney on ITV4. They’re having a lunchtime session in a era when between 12-2 the pubs would be packed with drinkers getting as many down their necks as they could during that short window and a mini riot when last orders were called. Not a Guinness pie with colcannon and a side of “slaw” in sight

Them days eh?

There was food though - in Scotland at the time anyway. Warm pies, kept under a slightly heated glass cabinet on the counter - a pie and a pint was my regular lunch for several happy years! Towards the end of the 70s, the strippers were good too!

GT49er · Oct 10, 2024

South Stand Bonfire said:
To be fair, the price of pub drinks compared to pay seemed to be a lot lot cheaper then compared to now.

It was; off licence booze was much dearer. Some pubs even had a jug bar, or a bottle bar, basically a hatch at the side where you could buy beer to take home - it was more expensive there than it would have been in the bar too.

JackB247 · Oct 10, 2024

The lunchtime pint is still a thing in my team at work. With the hybrid working model, we come in on one day from different parts of the country, so makes sense to socialise at lunchtime.

Only problem is Central London - just shy of £21 for a round for 3 of us earlier...

wellquickwoody · Oct 10, 2024

Printing industry, early 80s, one or two most lunchtimes, more on a Friday. Then back to the factory to operate printing presses for a couple of hours that could crush you in a heartbeat.

Happy Days!

heathgate · Oct 10, 2024

Peacehaven Wild Kids said:
Watching The Sweeney on ITV4. They’re having a lunchtime session in a era when between 12-2 the pubs would be packed with drinkers getting as many down their necks as they could during that short window and a mini riot when last orders were called. Not a Guinness pie with colcannon and a side of “slaw” in sight

Them days eh?

We used to abandon our computer suite on the 6th floor, wonder down to the 1st floor of our well known financial institution, to the bar, open from 12-3 and 5-8 every day.... eventually closed approx 2000, society couldn't cope with a fella who had a couple of social pints with colleagues.

Screaming J · Oct 10, 2024

My first proper job after Uni was in Dept of Transport in London, in Offices in Southwark St SE1. The Friday lunchtime drinks session was a regular thing and I remember all the pubs in the area heaving.

There were also some private clubs where you could continue drinking all afternoon after the pubs shut (2pm? 2:30? can't remember) if you knew about them.

There was also a mass exodus across Southwark Bridge just before 5pm as the pubs in the City opened at 5pm, but in Southwark they didn't open until 5:30!

There were also a few boozers near Borough Market that opened early in the morning for the market workers that you passed on the way to the office from London Bridge Stn. I was never tempted but a mate of mine once sunk a couple before arriving at his desk at about 9 am. He said it wasnt the best boozing choice he'd ever made and never repeated it!

Peacehaven Wild Kids · Oct 10, 2024

wellquickwoody said:
Printing industry, early 80s, one or two most lunchtimes, more on a Friday. Then back to the factory to operate printing presses for a couple of hours that could crush you in a heartbeat.

Happy Days!

Likewise, as someone mentioned earlier they got paid BEFORE Friday’s lunch break.
I was one of the builders on Homelees House on Dyke Rd and we’d have a right skinful in The Good Companions then go back to a building site and in them days it wasn’t steel toe caps and hard hats, it was Puma trainers and a Flock Of Seagulls haircut

Stato · Oct 10, 2024

Weststander said:
They were inflationary times! My first pints in 1981 I think were about 90p.

Less I'd imagine. 72p for a pint of Toby Bitter when I started drinking in pubs a few years after that. (Of course you may have been drinking something less crap).

Some of my happiest memories are of lunchtime sessions. There's something Proustian about sunlight coming through the window and picking up dust motes in a dark bar. Spirits me back to long afternoons lost in laughter, free of proper adult responsibilities. Danny Baker writes beautifully of the feeling in his first memoir.

North of Robertsbridge · Oct 10, 2024

My first job after uni, in the late 70s, was with a global computer manufacturer and I started out in technical sales support. Some of the sales execs I worked with were brilliant, one became CEO of the AA soon afterwards. They could hit their annual sales target within the first quarter

The nature of sales quotas was that if a sales team made 20% over target there were also sorts of goodies like bonuses and international sales conferences. If they sold much beyond that, then the following year’s sales targets went up accordingly.

Put the above together and part way into the financial year there was zero incentive, in fact a disincentive, to carry on selling computers

So every day was basically a lock-in down the local pub

After the first year of this, my liver and bladder just couldn’t take it and I moved sideways into building operating systems in Bracknell

I sort of look back on those times semi-fondly though

Weststander · Oct 10, 2024

Stato said:
Less I'd imagine. 72p for a pint of Toby Bitter when I started drinking in pubs a few years after that. (Of course you may have been drinking something less crap).

Some of my happiest memories are of lunchtime sessions. There's something Proustian about sunlight coming through the window and picking up dust motes in a dark bar. Spirits me back to long afternoons lost in laughter, free of proper adult responsibilities. Danny Baker writes beautifully of the feeling in his first memoir.

The funniest thing was going back outside to normal life, tipsy to drunk, with 99% of the world stone cold sober.

Peacehaven Wild Kids · Oct 10, 2024

[Rainman moment] I recall having a drink in Bull and Bush in Crawley in 1983 My mate paid 70p for his pint of Heineken and I paid 78p for a Stella.
However, i do also recall cans in the local Sainsbury’s were around the 40/50p mark so there was certainly a different pricing structure back then.

LamieRobertson · Oct 10, 2024

…gawd we are going back a bit….worked in a bank mid to late seventies…..couple of pubs close by ..one for lunchtime the other for after work …as a cashier I’m sure some customers benefited post lunch from my visits…as balancing the till was invariably tricky

Robinjakarta · Oct 10, 2024

Working in the civil service in the 70s and 80s mainly in Redhill and Sutton. Friday lunchtimes went on till closing time with 6 or 7 pints of Youngs common. Still like a good beer but could never drink anywhere near that much now.

Weststander · Oct 10, 2024

Robinjakarta said:
Working in the civil service in the 70s and 80s mainly in Redhill and Sutton. Friday lunchtimes went on till closing time with 6 or 7 pints of Youngs common. Still like a good beer but could never drink anywhere near that much now.

8 pints of lager was my norm for a very long time in pub crawls, 1981 on and off for 20 years. Then onto shorts …. as a 16 year old Vodka and Orange or Pernod, a bit later fell in love with G&T.

These days, that would give rise to whole load of loo visits :lol:

.

dazzer6666 · Oct 10, 2024

Common in the 80s and 90s (banking) to have a pint or two, and lost many Friday afternoons to the ‘looks like a half-dayer lads’ Friday session in the City. Pop back to the office around 4pm to pack up and either get the train home or carry on elsewhere.

The couple of years I spent in Jersey in the late 80s were even worse. Seen staff vomming into waste paper bins after lunchtime sessions

clapham_gull · Oct 10, 2024

2

dazzer6666 said:
Common in the 80s and 90s (banking) to have a pint or two, and lost many Friday afternoons to the ‘looks like a half-dayer lads’ Friday session in the City. Pop back to the office around 4pm to pack up and either get the train home or carry on elsewhere.

The couple of years I spent in Jersey in the late 80s were even worse. Seen staff vomming into waste paper bins after lunchtime sessions

Yep same in my business. Friday afternoon a wipe out in the 90s early 2000s.

2pm-5pm was simply a break before getting smashed elsewhere.

Swimboy64 · Oct 10, 2024

MTSeagulls said:
I started work in North Street in 1982 and most lunchtimes were spent in a pub in Queens Road.
Can't remember it's name but looks like it's The Hope and Ruin now.
By the 90s it was pretty much only Fridays that we'd go drinking.

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