MOST of us are aware of the difficulties pubs have been facing in recent years.

Cheap supermarket booze, higher taxes and – rather puzzlingly – young people drinking less have all ganged up on them.

Like the struggles of high street stores these days, and of one-off shops like butchers, bakers and greengrocers before the emergence of supermarkets, it looked as if there was little chance that they’d bounce back.

Yet in 2019 it looked as if pubs might have turned the corner. Figures from the Office for National Statistics that year showed the sector had expanded for the first time in a decade.

Then along came Covid. Lockdowns and strict social distancing rules hit them harder than most.

And now the most recent figures are painting a gloomier picture. The number of pubs in England and Wales has hits its lowest level ever.

Last month there were 39,970 pubs, down by 7,000 since 2012.

According to business analysts Altus, 400 pubs in England and Wales closed last year and some 200 shut in the first half of 2022.

Only 37 per cent of hospitality businesses are currently turning a profit.

It matters not just because of the job losses – though of course that matters enormously.

It also matters because pubs are more than drinking shops. In rural communities especially, they’re often a social hub, a place to meet friends and neighbours, sometimes the only one.

And if you are a regular, able to ask for 'the usual' and sure to see familiar faces, then a pub can foster a sense of connection – a fundamental social need.

Some country pubs, in rural Cumbria and other areas, now double as grocery shops or even post offices a few days a week, another social benefit.

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And for good or ill, they’re part of the fabric of British society. A study from 2016 showed that the average British pubgoer will spend 14 months of their lives in pubs – and more than £90,000 of their money.

That doesn’t sound very healthy. But if your drug of choice is caffeine rather than alcohol you can normally get a cup of tea or coffee in a pub these days.

Given that most drinkers drink more than they realise, and considering the social and physical effects of heavy drinking, many will disapprove of them.

But despite the efforts to do so, we’re never going to be able to recreate the 'café society' we find in mainland Europe here in Britain. We just don’t have the climate for it.

In every new town I’ll seek out a good curry house, a good bookshop and a good pub – and it was clear not long after I arrived in Carlisle that I was spoilt for choice on the pubs front.

I’m not a fan of the huge pub chains with the huge premises – though of course their low prices make them popular with students.

I’d rather have more traditional, more intimate and comfortable surroundings, ideally with a few old men wearing flat caps and supping bitter, just for the atmosphere.

Carlisle was full of good pubs. The States Management Scheme from 1916 to 1973, under which pubs in and around the city were nationalised, left us with some the most elegant, attractive pubs anywhere I can think of.

And all pubs immediately become more pleasant places to be exactly 15 years ago this month – in July 2007 – when passive smoking within them was no longer compulsory.

John Major, whom some may remember, once spoke of his vision of Britain as a country of “warm beer, cricket on the village green and spinsters cycling to communion”.

It was very much a vision of rural England that didn’t apply to Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland or any English city – as someone should have pointed out to him.

And I remember some American friends being confused by the phrase 'warm beer', as if beer in English pubs was actually a hot drink, perhaps akin to mulled wine.

But I knew what our former prime minister was getting at. We might not be a wine-producing country but Britain and Ireland have a vast array of different ales, stouts and bitters that are best not served chilled.

It was only in the unusually hot summers in 1975 and 1976 that British drinkers began to opt for blander, chilled lager – and it now accounts for 75 per cent of UK beer sales.

Yet it’s an unsophisticated flavour compared to our homegrown beers. It would be like French people from the Champagne or Bordeaux regions guzzling German Liebfraumilch – though they’re not generally as daft as us.

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