Last Orders For 12 Wicklow Pubs

Happy daze…

hanks to our big feck-off tellies and cheap as Chipsticks supermarket booze, those lockdowns days were a definite blur for many.

The world’s 2-year Lost Weekend also changed the way people approached work, rest and play.

It’s an axis-shift that started with the lockdowns and is reflected today in the simple fact that 99.98% of Greystonians are in pyjamas by 7pm. If not sooner.

The Covid-19 jet lag is still with us, long after the government wage subsidy schemes have gone, and so it’s hardly surprising that new Drinks Industry Group of Ireland figures released today reveal that 12 Wicklow pubs have pulled down the shutters since the pandemic hit. Or since all the free money dried up, to be more precise.

Nationally, 108 pubs shut down across Ireland last year, with the gradual shift over the past two decades to a country happier living la vida sofa than paying high bar prices or risking a little drink driving conviction resulting in almost 2,000 Irish pubs closing since 2005.

It’s a shift in socialising reflected even in sunny, super-rich Greystones, with a population of 27,000 still not enough, it seems, to pack out a pub on an average night. Back in the 1970s and ’80s, sure, there were feckin’ queues for the booze at weekends.

And, if it wasn’t raining too hard, weekdays too.

Let’s hope this coffee town can hold on to its old boozers so that future generations can come together as we always did to air any differences. In the pub car park.

As Lady Joni of Mitchell always says, you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone…