Crunch Time Again

 With COVID cases increasing hugely, the government is doing what it did just before the first lockdown:  telling us not to go to places and gather with people, but not supporting the businesses about to be hit by lack of customers again.

So that leaves us with a bit of a dilemma.

It'll be abundantly clear that we really don't like ANY busy places at ANY time of year.  We had learned to tolerate it in the Basketmakers and the Evening Star on match days and in the Barley Mow in December.

Nearly two years into this dratted pandemic, Best Beer Buddy and I are much, much less likely to see lots of people gathering in a place as being a necessary evil to suffer in order to see the benefit of our wish to drink good beer.

Yesterday we travelled back to Bristol and decided to avoid London (and specifically the tube).  One way wold have been to travel via the South Coast - but there's a lesser-encouraged route:  Eastbourne-Gatwick-Reading.  We didn't like the idea of not getting on the Bristol train at its origin point since we'd probably be on the last off-peak train and it is usually pretty busy.  But we decided that it was worth a try.

The last transfer - off the train from Gatwick and then onto the train from London involved a bit of a trek since we'd managed to get ourselves on the last carriage thanks to a direction reversal at Redhill (sigh).  Also the transfer time was only about 6 minutes.

It was a tiny bit stressful to make the crossing but the train pulled in just as we landed at the bottom of the escalator.  We got on the nearest carriage and found a seat really easily so there was a gentle sigh of relief of catching the train and there having been no crowds en route.

There was a minor/annoying fridge incident to be dealt with when we arrived at the flat but within 20 mins we were heading to the Barley Mow braced to give it a miss if there were too many people.

We were in luck.  Plenty of space, LOADS of beer and a fair bit of mask wearing whilst walking about so we settled in.  A really nice early evening ensued and we didn't manage to exhaust the range of beer available to try.

Clearly the working from home mandate has affected the BM but we find ourselves wondering what our most responsible course of action is now.

Do we support the pubs we love so much by doing our usual drink-whilst-avoiding-crowds thing, or do we stay home so as not to be part of the virus vehicle?

We're both jabbed to teeth (3 COVID + 1 Flu) and we wear masks where we can. We don't really socialise, nor do we talk very loudly in the pub - we sit in the corner, drink at a rate of approximately 1 pint per hour each and generally don't clutter up the place too much.  We also test a couple of times a week.

I think it's too much the industry to expect to rely on December drinking to recover everything that's happened but I'd like to think there's a balance we can help with by going to the pub - but carefully.

I really hope I'm right.