Drum Roll Please - - - - The MidWeek Mention

Here it is, the first ever Mid-Week Mention on Pond Parleys. We hope to highlight great web sites, products, blogs, people - you name it! (Obviously as long as they have some relevance to the blog!)

Dan da da dan dan da-a-a-a-n....

We'd like to tell you about a fab web site owned by Roger Penycate, a Londoner who has lived in the US since 2002 and currently lives in Virginia, .

Miniature Picture Cards, offers unique pictures of nearly 100 different themes and topics, They are, as Roger describes them;

"Larger pictures (up to 20" x 12") which include apertures containing lots of smaller (miniature) picture card sets".  The pictures (un-framed) are available in a variety of sizes.

As well as a plethora of subjects for the American and Canadian markets, there is a delightful Great Britain section specifically for ex-pats and anglophiles. Card selections include the inimitable London Buses

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Aren't they great!

There's also cathedrals, Kings & Queens, scenes from Dickens and these great old pubs:

And lots more....

We have teamed up with Roger to offer one free picture (maximum size 17" x 14") in a seriously easy competition. 

All you have to do is visit the site here and tell us which card is your favo(u)rite. It's that easy. Come back here and tell us in the comment box. Roger will then be picking a random number, and the person whose comment is in that place on the comment list wins whichever card s/he chooses.
He's even picking up postage, so US and UK readers are all eligible.

You have till Saturday to try your luck, and we'll announce our winner in our Sunday post.

Good luck!

Bottoms up!

This week we discuss drinking habits on either side of the Pond, and welcome Marsha, a Canadian who is living in London and pursuing her dream, to be a published writer.

Marsha

Midnight in Pub-Land... and All's Quiet

It's my first week in London. Straight from the Canadian hinterland (otherwise known as the country's capital, Ottawa), I saunter into a pub for my first real night out in the big city. My friend and I eagerly head for the bar. It's quarter to eleven, and the night is just beginning.

'I'll have a glass of house red,' I say, opting for the cheapest option on the menu. I've yet to start working, and my Canadian bank account is dwindling fast.

'Sorry, last call was fifteen minutes ago.' The bartender's bored with me already.

'What?' I look at my watch. Has time suddenly shifted forward by three hours? Surely no pub would close at 11!

The bartender smiles. 'Welcome to England.'

In the five years I've been in England, I've adapted to the harsh reality of such early closing times for pubs -- although I've yet to understand it. Even with the recent legislation enabling pubs to stay open later, most have opted to keep their opening hours the same. Do British people need their eight hours' sleep? Have they drunk so much that by eleven o'clock they're so blathered they need to head for home? It's a mystery to me.

Not that I want to drink into the early hours, but I like the option of hanging out past twelve. In Canada -- Montreal, in particular -- pubs and bars stay open until at least 2 a.m. People don't even start to make their way out until around 10. But there again is the difference. Here, people see pubs as a way to unwind after work; for a quick pint on the way home. Night-clubs are for serious partying, those nights when double vision is your constant companion and the toilet bowl your best friend. And there's not a heck of a lot in between the two. You're either home by 11, or you're a slave to the dance floor. For people like me, who fancy a glass (or two) of Chardonnay after midnight in an environment where I can actually hear what my friend is saying, it's a sorry scenario.

You hear a lot in the news about 'binge culture'; of people drinking so much, so quickly, they're destroying their health. I can't help but wonder if that's a legacy of early closing times. Yes, people are responsible for their own behaviour, but if they didn't feel eleven o'clock approaching so quickly, maybe they wouldn't feel the urge to drink so fast.

All I want is a pub that stays open past the magic hour of midnight. Is that too much to ask? In my part of London, apparently so.

Toni:

I can see a pub from my bedroom window, and it stays open till 2.30am at the weekends. I live not far from several bars and the thing that continues to (pleasantly) surprise me is the total lack of alcohol-induced violence. I am sometimes woken by drunken arrangements being made for the following day, or questionable renditions of “I Will Survive”, but never a fight. They even serve alcohol at baseball games for heaven’s sake! Yes, people will be ejected or refused service if they appear too inebriated, but Americans, I find, are fairly happy drunks.

What is it that reduces the worst form of Brit to a marauding Neanderthal after one too many? Why does the aim of a night out, for many young Brits, appear to be to get as knee-walking drunk as humanly possible. When the licensing hours were allowed to be extended, some thought that this might make alcohol less of a “forbidden fruit” in the UK, perhaps leading to more responsible drinking. It doesn’t look like this has happened at all.

What I have noticed in my 19 years in the US however, is the amount of drink/driving that goes on. I was a driver when they cracked down on this in England in the 80’s; several acquaintances received a year’s ban and a huge fine for being slightly over the limit. It taught everyone a lesson and most of my friends and relatives don’t touch a drop when they have the car now. When my husband and I leave the car at home on a night out in the US, our friends usually assume it’s because we are worried about parking. The fact that we can flag a taxi down quickly makes it very easy to stay on the right side of the law. In many newer cities and rural parts of the States, there is no real public transport system, but it doesn’t seem to occur to people that it’s probably not a good idea to have a few brewskies while driving.

Here, although all states now have a .08 blood alcohol limit, the fines and consequences for driving over the limit vary wildly and aren’t nearly punitive enough to act as a deterrent. In Alabama, you’ll get a 90 day ban for your first offence/offense and a year for your second; in Arkansas it’ll be 120 days followed by a 2 year ban, while in Kansas you get a piffling 30 day ban the first time, followed by a year ban next time round. The irony is that were you to hit someone while over the limit (or under the influence as they say here) you could quite easily be punished in the criminal justice system then hit with a civil suit by the other party. Not even that possibility seems to make people stop and think.