LONDON – On the corner of Edwardes Square, in the heart of Kensington in London, a square with a luxuriant garden, surrounded on all four sides by identical square blocks of austere terraced houses. There in the middle, a blue plaque remembers that “the Italian poet and patriot” lived there for a year. Ugo Foscolo. Attached to the former abode of the author of the Sepulchres stands the sign of Scarsdale Tavern: the pub owned by the chain Fuller’s, a well-known London brewery, had been inaugurated in the years in which Foscolo lived in the square: but the beer and the lamb in the oven will have gone wrong every time, to him who hated the French who had forced him to leave his beloved Venice: the public house Scarsdale had been built by a Parisian architect, Louis Leon Changeur, in the early nineteenth century, in view of a hypothetical French invasion of England. Self Napoleon had he taken London, his headquarters would have been in the tavern.
After the snow, the “glorious weather”
The Scarsdale is rightly considered one of the most beautiful pubs in all of London, thanks also to the outdoor tables under the trees and the view of the splendid garden. But on the day of the reopening, in the morning, there was a veil of snow on the tables: at dawn it snowed, almost as if the weather had wanted to signal the exceptional nature of the event. After nearly four months of quarantine, Great Britain reopens its doors: pubs, restaurants and shops have welcomed customers (only outdoors). Many clubs, which had been locked since before Christmas, still had Christmas trees and holiday decorations on their windows: a surreal scene at Easter. The Scarsdale exhibits flower beds, but has not reopened, because it has few tables outside and has decided to wait until mid-May, when all the places will be able to welcome customers inside as well. Too bad, because the day, as often happens in spring in London, has turned into a “glorious weatherA wonderful time, with a mild sun that warmed the tables at lunchtime. To the delight of customers and takings: such a high peak of people in pubs had never been seen.
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(Don’t know why) it’s Manic Monday
Long Old Brompton Road, between Chelsea and Fulham, there is The Bolton which boasts of being there since 1892. And it’s closed: it doesn’t have enough space for outdoor seating. A little further on, however, the small pub The Troubadour he has set up a couple of tables on the sidewalk: a group of young people sip pints of beer. The Monday of the reopening of the country has already been renamed “Manic Monday», The crazy Monday of the flood that pours into the premises, the open ones. This was to be expected: it was the longest closure in the country’s recent history. Even during the Second World War, Londoners didn’t have to endure that much. And since, according to the basic law of Physics, every reaction corresponds to an opposite and equal reaction, now the city experiences the largest consumption rebound ever seen. “We are open all day, from 11 in the morning,” explains the owner of the Troubadour. “There is practically no break between lunch and dinner, but we serve meals all day.” It was the only way to handle the exaggerated request for reservations. “He hasn’t seen anything like this in decades of doing this job,” he notes. And he’s not the only one: no one has ever seen him. In all of London, it is impossible to find a seat in any club: it is an unprecedented boom. Even in much less economical and refined places it is sold out: alla Berners Tavern which, despite its name, is an elegant and expensive restaurant in Mayfair there are no seats until early June. The UK’s record-breaking vaccination campaign will lead to a strong rebound in GDP in the second quarter of the year, driven by the resumption of consumption.
And the parliamentarians ran dry
In the midst of so much enthusiasm, there are those who remain at the stake. For the politicians and officials of the Houses of Parliament it will be a “Dry April», A teetotaler April. In the United Kingdom, the “Dry JanuaryJanuary without drinking, a month to cleanse oneself of the excesses of Christmas. This year, after January, central London is also doing an encore in spring. The pubs around the area of Westminster they have all remained closed: the historical one St. Stephens Tavern, right in front of the Big Ben, a favorite haunt of politicians, will only reopen on 20 May. The other two favorite pubs of parliamentarians, the Red Lion, halfway between the House of Commons and Downing Street, and the Westminster Arms, behind St. James’s Park, they won’t be rolling the shutters until mid-May: they’re all indoor venues only. MPs and Lords are forced to abstinence. Another mockery for the City of London, closed for a year with empty skyscrapers and ghostly streets. The pandemic has moved business to the suburbs, where people live between housekeeping obligations, remote work and strolls to the neighborhood park.
The working class goes to the pub
To see the crowd you have to go outside the center, for example Hammersmith, a district that boasts centuries of popular tradition, starting with the name: in English “hammersmith” is the blacksmith, because this was the suburb of the artisans who worked iron. The Blue Boat, pub on the River Thames, is the haunt of that working class sung by John Lennon but today it is much more worker and much more gentrified. At lunchtime, the modern restaurant inside a luxury residential complex is sold out: “There is no room,” the Italian waiter explains with regret. «If he wants to eat, he can sit at a table, but he has to free them within half an hour because it is booked.» »On the pub’s website, there are no free places for lunch until May 17, the day when the capacity will increase. When Boris Johnson, announcing a reopening window at the end of March, invited the British to spend the money and go to the pub for a beer, they must have taken it literally.