[Drinking] Lunchtime Drinking (70s80s)

[Peacehaven Wild Kids]

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?

 

[Chicken Run]

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?

Teachers at my Secondary School in the early 80’s always stank of alcohol in the afternoons

 

[The Clamp]

Yeah. Teachers stank of booze most afternoons.

In the late 90’s and early 00’s we’d quite often sink 4 points on a lunch hour and head back to work. And smoked in the pub while doing it.

 

[Cheshire Cat]

I had one lecturer at college who was so pissed in the afternoon, he fell over the overhead projector.

It enlivened a very dull session.

 

[Is it PotG?]

Teachers at my Secondary School in the early 80’s always stank of alcohol in the afternoons

Yep, same here.

Mr W the Maths teacher certainly proved to be less effective in the afternoon lessons.

 

[vegster]

The Hare and Hounds in Worthing was a favourite lunchtime haunt of local accountants and solicitors, there was a big jar of Nuttalls Minto's on the bar so they could crawl back to work without reeking of booze.

 

[Weststander]

I started office work in 1988. The older blokes (born early 1950's) were into getting several pints of Harvey's down most lunchtimes, one was literally an alcoholic .... bottle of vodka in his drawer and he got done for drink driving .

I think there's been a resurgence of Friday afternoon boozing in the last 20 years. Builders in family etc always worked all day Fridays, but now pubs in Hove etc are busy from 1pm all afternoon.

 

[A mex eyecan]

Yes guilty here guv. However there was a fair bit of business concluded over a couple of pints, a bacon roll and a few smokes.

 

[the larks]

i seem to recall around 1979, the bulk of the ESCC planning dept left work one friday luchtime to get as many pints of Harveys down them at the Lewes Arms due a increase in a pint from Saturday, My memory tells me a pint was going up to 36p

 

[Bozza]

I'd like to put a word in for the 90s - the early 90s anyway.

At my first job, the local pub - The Golden Lion in Durrington - did a very brisk trade each lunchtime from workers employed at the nearby offices.

 

[Weststander]

i seem to recall around 1979, the bulk of the ESCC planning dept left work one friday luchtime to get as many pints of Harveys down them at the Lewes Arms due a increase in a pint from Saturday, My memory tells me a pint was going up to 36p

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

 

[sparkie]

Yes, those were the days.

3 pints at lunchtimes in the 90s.

Then the Fun Police stopped it a few years later.

My work contract now bans lunchtime alcohol.

 

[Insel affe]

When i worked in the butchers dept at a supermarket in Haslemere early 90s, we would collect our wages in paper envelopes on a Friday lunchtime (what were they thinking) and we would disappear down the local and not go back, that lasted for about 6 months and then they paid us at the end of the day.

 

[The Clamp]

So many men spent so much of their life pissed in the U.K. up until about 2005

 

[The Clamp]

When I worked at Legal and General in Dorking in the 90’s, Friday afternoon piss ups were the norm.

A few of us took a sheep and a goat into a pub one afternoon and all is L&G mob were banned for a while.

We all went back the following Friday and proceeded to get pissed again.

 

[timbha]

There’s a tale of Alliance staff being strewn around Hove Park on Friday afternoons in the 70s and 80s after a visit to the Sackville. I only worked there for a short while.

 

[Questions]

There weren’t many places you could carry on drinking after 2,30 on a Saturday afternoon.
Luckily we always had Woodside Road to ‘watch’ the football.

 

[MTSeagulls]

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.

 

[kevo]

Was recently recalling such activities with a female colleague who I worked with in the late 80s. There was a pub across the road from our office and we would keep an eye on our boss's office window. He would often have long business lunches and we knew we could stay in the pub until he returned. On one particularly boozy lunchtime, my colleague famously downed THIRTEEN gin and tonics. Still don't know how she got through the afternoon.

 

[WATFORD zero]

My first few years working were with big machines or on the trades where nobody drank and went back to work if they wanted to retain all their limbs. However early/mid 80's i'd progressed to mainframe programmer, if 10 of us went out Friday lunchtime that meant 10 rounds of drinks, come back for an hour or two in the afternoon, definitely don't touch anything and then go back to the pub.

On the rare occasion someone did something on a Friday afternoon, at best Monday morning would be 'what f***wit did this ?' or, at worst, if they'd done something to the live environment, one of us would get bleeped Friday night on call, even more pissed, get a cab in, eventually fix it on double time + time off in lieu.

Happy times