Happy St Patrick’s Day: This is the rule of pints

The rule of pints is very simple. I came to understand the rule of pints the other day while I was in the pub with a journalist called David and we “got to talking”. It goes like this: 

One pint is to be enjoyed. It is a speedy catch up after work; a holiday memory while gazing out to sea; a lunch time in a country pub when “on driving duty”; a casual Sunday after a long walk; a stolen moment in the run up to dinner; a calm and soothing situation before boarding a train with 15 minutes to spare; it’s taking the edge off. 

Next we come to one of the foremost junctures in the rule of pints: having two pints doesn’t exist. To have two pints would be a waste of time. It would be to fail oneself.

To clarify, two pints is nonsense behaviour of the highest order. What is the point? Let’s examine the proposition before a more abstract and meandering deliberation – after two pints, you are not even nearly inebriated. But you are a bit drowsy and sluggish, probably, and you’ll definitely need the loo on the way home. Two pints is a suggestion of three, one of the best quantities of pints, and yet isn’t three at all. It’s two. 

Two pints is the amount drunk by bosses who are trying to fit in with their workers at the pub, staying for 35 minutes or so to seem like they care but leaving before actually committing to any semblance of an evening; it’s “oh go on then” to peer-pressuring pals before driving home illegally; it’s trying to make time for “one more” when there simply isn’t time and having a whisky or rum alongside the first pint would have served perfectly; it’s queuing up at the football for too long and then missing a goal; it’s thinking two before dinner will be okay and then having to go to the loo three times before pudding and everyone thinking you have diabetes or worse; it’s a waste of time because it’s almost impossible not to have two without having three, and in any case it’s almost certainly illegal because of some medieval code. 

Three pints, meanwhile, is a beautiful amount. It is neither boring nor drunk, and as such is suitable for any occasion. 

Three pints is a catch up with a close friend who needs to be up very early for something important (not catching a flight, because you shouldn’t get on a plane sober, but everything else); it’s a good day out at the football for a Tuesday night fixture; it’s fun afternoon in the countryside with family; it’s a lubricating train journey lasting more than an hour but no more than three; it’s a settling way to calm the nerves when something important is afoot; it’s a relaxing and meditative time on the beach while admiring the sunset midway through a paradise-hewn adventure; it’s the ideal amount upon finishing work at about 5.30pm but when you need to be home for dinner.

Four pints upsets me because having four pints is upsetting. The notion actually isn’t difficult to explain so I won’t be exhaustive. There is no tangible way anyone, anywhere – anyone normal, anyway – can drink four pints without immediately requiring a fifth. This, I think, is what David was trying to do to me. He was trying to make me drink five, under the guise of drinking four. And then afterwards, later on with other people, he tried to solidify his position and proclaimed four pints to be an excellent number.

The fact is, four pints is a joke, a lie; it’s mischievousness, salaciousness, getting carried away; it should not and cannot come to pass when there are matters at hand and people to see; it is a barren wasteland, where intoxication is sidling slowly up to you like a needy postman; it is, often, a disaster. Four pints is also the gateway to heaven but only when heaven is the place you’d like to be. 

Five pints is heaven. There are times when more might be required but after five I quite enjoy moving onto rum. This isn’t the case for all – “heaven”, therefore, is subjective. But I think we can all agree that whatever heaven is, and wherever it might well be, five pints is a delicious amount of alcohol and sets you up comfortably for a day or an evening of mindless frivolity, good chat, convivial times. 

Look. Five pints is sitting on a bar stool talking about the way horses have different hooves to cows; it’s the promise of going to Spain together in two months’ time; it’s saying, “let’s go and have oysters”, and then actually going and having them; it precedes a bottle of champagne – indeed it comes before so many things; it’s a great day out, wherever you are; it’s an okay day out with tolerable people, or a tolerable one with people who are insufferable; it’s midnight and a kebab; it’s 10pm and spirits and mixers; it’s the feeling you get when you don’t miss a necessary bus; it’s waking up and not feeling completely terrible; it’s a Thai massage in Bangkok from a man named Claude who looks a little wizard-like and dresses like a lightly dressed salad; it’s life affirmed, life anew, life on a comfy chair. 

Anything more than five pints is mere reckless abandon and any consideration of any sort of rule fades away. Who cares after five pints? I’m not dissuading anyone from moving to that happy, silly arena, by the way. All this is common sense.

It’s possible the rule of pints applies only to daytime, ending after late afternoon drinking. Post-7pm, beyond “a quick drink after work”, there are no rules. “All bets are off”, as people who wear espadrilles on holiday in Croatia say. And so very simply the rule of pints is a stipulation between the hours of 6am and 6pm. 

So anyway, that’s the rule of pints. It’s a load of old nonsense isn’t it? Guess how many I had before writing this.

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