Hamish Champ: Staycation schmaycation
Much has been made of 'staycations' in recent months, whereby financially battered Brits eschew holidays abroad and choose to spend what few quid they have left in their pockets on pleasure and leisure somewhat closer to home.
Pubs were supposedly going to be a major beneficiary of this phenomenon, though I've always found anecdotal suggestions that fewer and fewer people are going abroad during school holidays for reasons of economic hardship unverifiable. That is until last week.
Living as I do in London half term in October is usually a good time to take one's child to see the sights. There's loads of stuff to do that's free in the days before the clocks go back, such as museums and galleries, parks and - hold one's breath - toy shops, if only for a bit of window shopping.
With many people away catching some rays before the winter lockdown most are usually relatively easy to get to, and once gotten to, thence sufficiently get aroundable.
Not so last week, when I was off minding my boy. It seemed that everyone who normally flew off to warm climes for the half term break had decided to visit the Natural History Museum. Or Hamleys. Or a cinema in Greenwich.
The back of the queues to get into the Natural History Museum and the neighbouring Science Museum were almost touching each other. Muttering 'sod that for a game of soldiers' we adjourned to the nearby V&A where Sam showed admirable disdain for the fashion displays but couldn't get enough of the samurai outfits and blood-curdling swords.
Later, a proposed 'quick' visit to Hamleys was anything but. I know the UK's largest toy shop is busy all year round, but last week it looked like the last few days before Christmas. As my 10 year-old slavered over shelves groaning with Transformer toys, Bionicle kits and 'Ben 10' figures it was as much as I could to keep from screaming.
You want to see consumerism 'raw in tooth and claw'? Half an hour in Hamleys should do it.
Even the local cinema was packed. I can thoroughly recommend Fantastic Mr Fox, but if the Greenwich Picture House is anything to go by you'll need to book.
So did pubs benefit from all this stay-at-home activity stuff? You tell me. Certainly my lad - who loves being in a pub - and I visited several over the course of the week for lunch and the odd bit of 'respite therapy'.
I had to laugh on one occasion though. A bar - not a pub - which we visited on the Brighton seafront was advertising its daily 'specials' on a blackboard. In rather wobbly chalk handwriting it proclaimed that customers could enjoy a "cold" can of John Smiths or Guinness for just £3.
In such tough economic times who could resist such an appealing offer? Er, me, as it goes…
