Fast
food at night
London in the early morning is a rather different place. So
many bars and clubs more or less make a mockery of the old licensing laws that
used to decree that pubs shut on certain hours. When the laws were liberalized
there were many dire warnings of what would happen but in general the level of
drunkenness did not rose particularly, that is not more than it had already.
London in the small hours particularly on Friday ad Saturday
nights is the domain of the drunk. So many people get together to drink in bars
and go on to their clubs usually with music provided. The night is long and
mostly there is a favourite food, the Doner kebab
This food is made of meat specially placed on a grill from
which slices are cut. With the addition of salad it is placed n a special thin
pitta bread, Sauces are added the usual repertoire being chilli sauce or garlic
sauce.
This has become one of the foods of choice after a heavy
night’s drinking. Britain tends to have the custom of an evening spent downing
pints of beer and then going for a kebab to absorb some of the alcohol. The
Spanish custom for instance, of eating along with the drink is not much in
evidence in the pub culture here.
However doner kebab is something the British public have
taken to their hearts. The places in London are usually run buy immigrants from
Turkey who stay open all hours of the night. Their work is admirable as they
work long and hard and have to put up with a lot of abuse from drunken
customers who seem to think they can vent all their frustrations on them
Most other people in this society would give up on this
enterprise but this does not faze the shop owners who carry on with the job
regardless.
So much is actually made in this trade and in a way they
suffer less from the clientele that the chicken and chips shops also ubiquitous
who mostly have to shut much earlier.
Fish and chips shops of the traditional kind tend to close much earlier.
The shops that have chicken and chips usually sell cheaper products so instead
they usually have troublesome adolescents who are more likely to have got their
highs from illegal drugs such as cannabis and then plan quite nasty violence
instead!
The drunkenness in London and other towns has usually raised
a lot of concerns about the alcohol fuelled crime that occurs in city centres
at night. Various solutions have been proposed such as a minimum price for
drinks. However at the real centre of the problem is the fact that most people
in these situations feel they have no other outlets for their frustrations
apart from getting roaring drunk. Until this is addressed London and other
cities will continue to experience this sort of drunken and drug fuelled
behavior!
