I've just spent the past 36 hours in France. Much of it was spent with friends in a rural bar 40 miles from Calais where we ate, drank and played cards, It was easy to draw parallels with the best of rural pubs in the UK but there were some distinct differences.
The bar is also the village tabac and a large poster informed us of the impending national smoking ban which takes effect on January 1 (they missed the UK trick of sneaking it in during the warmer weather). There were also details of the forthcoming march in Paris against this threat to their national institutions. We seemed to have missed that idea altogether.
Marie Madeleine served the drinks with her daughter. She is in her seventies and she seems sprightly enough. She banged out the ice from the rubber moulds onto the draining board and threw them in the ice bucket. Her eyes were everywhere and her service perfunctory.
But I cannot understand how that business makes money. It may be that, because there is no pub company or brewery behind them bleeding the profits, they can exist on their meagre income. No strangers were coming in and out of the bar. There is absolutely no evidence of business strategies, marketing, merchandising or any other of the commercial considerations necessary here. I doubt, even including the tobacco sales, more than €100 was taken on many days in that bar. Many such bars have disappeared. In one valley I am familiar with, within 10 years 10 bars were reduced to just one.
In light of all this I am still left pondering how our Government got it so wrong about their idea of café culture. What did they intend? For our rural bars to close at a similar rate? Twenty-four hour licensing (huh!) and the 'liberalisation' of our laws were intended to reflect a continental approach. But what, to me, is evident is that we are not continental. The whole ethos of continental bars is completely alien to our culture.
The plight of British bars continues apace. It would be difficult to prevent. The solution is complex and compounded by too many influences. A one size solution lifted from an artificial continental model isn't going to be of benefit. But there seems to be no evidence the Government wants, or sees any need, to perpetuate the idea of the British pub. Maybe, for them, it has had its day.