Pubs are places of beauty, where men and women can gather together, and exchange ideas, chat-up lines and, in the toilets, bodily fluids if they so wish. They are places of poetry, of literature, of philosophy, and of being able to lean 45 degrees to one side because your shoes are stuck to the carpet.
But one thing annoys me about pubs, and that’s when you order an orange juice or a lemonade and the barperson nips out the back...
...and you watch them pouring you a drink from a supermarket’s-own-brand lemonade bottle or a supermarket’s-own-brand orange juice carton. I mean, how cheeky is that!
I don’t mind being served cheap lemonade or orange juice per se, but they could at least maintain the pretence that they’re not simply ripping you off by charging you a quid for a glass of lemonade poured in front of your eyes from a bottle with ‘49p’ written on it. They could at least make the lemonade or the orange juice come out of the squirty soda thing. That, as a bar-frequenting customer, is what I’m paying for; the illusion that a pub-bought lemonade costing a quid isn’t exactly the same as a supermarket-bought lemonade costing 49p.
And they could at least get half-way decent lemonade or orange juice. Marks & Spencer’s lemonade or orange juice, not Poundstretcher’s lemonade or orange juice. It’s just the rubbing-the-customer’s-face-in-it that I object to, the sheer unadulterated contempt. The fact they can’t even be bothered to conceal the fact that they're ripping you off.
I’ve taken a stand. From now on, I’ll be boycotting all lemonades and orange juices in pubs and will be sticking strictly to wines, lagers and spirits. It’s the only sensible course of action. Join me, it could become a national campaign.