Salocin

Royale With Cheese

There's a scene we all know from Pulp Fiction in which John Travolta's character, having just returned from a trip to Europe, is explaining some of the differences between the European way of doing things (mayonnaise with fries, for example) that he thinks is 'the funniest thing' about the continent...

I started thinking about this when I was in Brussels 'Gare du Midi' - one of our major train stations and the terminus for the Eurostar and Thalys high-speed trains. I was walking around, wasting time waiting for a train home, when I came upon a vending machine. It took me a minute to figure out why it seemed so weird to me, but then I noticed ... between the orange juice and the Coca-Cola, was an entire row of beer cans. Now I've always known that vending machines in Belgium will provide the thirsty with beer and the hungry with waffles (I kid you not) but then taht starts me thinking... Why is it that anglo-saxon countries seem to have these draconian measures preventing their populations from drinking - it's as if, without these regulations, Britain and certain American states would immediately disintegrate into drunken revolution and public group vomiting sessions. And if you've lived there, and seen what happens between 10:45 and 11pm, you know I'm not kidding.

Vincent: … but you know what the funniest thing about Europe is?
Jules: What?
Vincent: It's the little differences. A lot of the same shit we got here, they got there, but there they're a little different.
Jules: Examples?
Vincent: Well, in Amsterdam, you can buy beer in a movie theater - and I don't mean in a paper cup either. They give you a glass of beer, like in a bar. In Paris, you can buy beer at McDonald's. Also, you know what they call a "Quarter Pounder with Cheese" in Paris?
Jules: They don't call it a "Quarter Pounder with Cheese"?
Vincent: No, they got the metric system there, they wouldn't know what the fuck a "Quarter Pounder" is.
Jules: What do they call it?
Vincent: "Royale with Cheese."
Jules: "Royale with Cheese." What do they call a "Big Mac"?
Vincent: "Big Mac's" a "Big Mac", but they call it "Le Big Mac".
Jules: "Le Big Mac." What do they call a "Whopper"?
Vincent: I dunno, I didn't go into a Burger King. But you know what they put on french fries in Holland instead of ketchup?
Jules: What?
Vincent: Mayonnaise.
Jules: Goddamn!
Vincent: I've seen them do it. And I don't mean a little bit on the side of the plate, they fucking drown them in it.
Jules: Uuccch!

Right now, in the UK, there is an ongoing debate about the liberalisation of the laws that control the consumption of alcohol. Specifically, they're talking about removing the 11-o'Clock limit on licensed premises.

At the moment, if you're drinking in a pub, at 10:45, a bell will be rung, or the pub manager will thump the bar and yell, 'last orders'. That means that you have 15 minutes to order from the bar before they shut it down for the night. They have no choice, it's the law. So up shuffles a representative from every group in the bar, and the alcohol flows, for the next 15 minutes, even faster than it has for the last 3 hours. Once the bar is closed, these same laws insist that the licensed premises be empty by 11:15. That means that these pints of beer have to be drunk in about 15 minutes. So everyone drinks them as fast as they can, go into the street, and gradually degenerate as the alcohol seeps into their systems.

The fear that comes with the liberalisation idea is that the British have had to time their drinking to finish at 11pm ever since the last world war, and that this is so deeply ingrained that if you were to relax the rule, they'd still start drinking at the same time, they'd get just as drunk just as fast, but there would no longer be a way to get them to stop come 11pm. Instead, they'd just keep drinking, reaching levels of inebriation that have previously been unattainable on a normal day. Hence the resistance to the whole concept of relaxing the licensing laws.

What's more, the clubs and very rare bars in England that do actually have the right to stay open until 2am are in the enviable position of having far too little room to cater for the huge crowds of people who would like to continue drinking on a Friday or Saturday night. This results in very long lines outside these select establishments, with extremely unpleasant and arrogant bouncers whom you have to be very polite to (or just have a folded 20 pound note in your hand) in order to get them to let you in. These bars can charge lots of money to let you have the privilege of continued alcohol past 11pm, because there are no alternatives. If everything gets liberalised, they're going to see their business tail off a little, and they'll lose the ability to charge at the door, because, hey... alternatives with pleasant staff, minus the 500-pound gorilla in the monkey-suit to suck up to at the front door.

So what will happen when the laws finally do get relaxed (because I'm pretty sure they eventually will be)? Will the British people find the ability to control their drinking, or will London become like so many overrun foreign tourist resorts, with teenagers throwing up against the side of buildings and bouncers breaking up additional alcohol-and-testosterone-fuelled confrontations? Will there be an adaptation period and then an adaptation in drinking habits? As social experiments go, this could be interesting to watch. From a distance.