Surely a misconception. A happy hour involves booze. Half-price cocktails for a limited period during the early evening have only one aim. To get you pie-eyed and incapable of movement, so you'll stay on, spend a fortune and be thrown out at closing time.
A happy hour based on coffee would have the opposite effect. Three cheap Americanos and you'd fidget like an ant in a frying pan. Address the staff in Spanish, urge revolution, speak lewdly to the opposite sex (later the same sex) and be shown the door at seven.
I have never knowingly taken part in a happy hour, perhaps because it seems so blatant. In my youth, and especially in London, I needed no such encouragement. Later I became cautious. To wake up near midnight on a tube train three stations short of Ongar was salutary.
My happy hour would be in a pub where everyone read books – hardbacks, since they show greater commitment. Or sipped quietly, listening to a lecture on hermeneutics. BBC Radio 3 on low volume, the Composer of the Week always Gesualdo. And men speaking to women in the clipped etiquette of 1950s TV commercials ("I'm going home to an evening meal of fish fingers and Pom." "O, I say, may I join you?"). Mayhem would be permitted but in a car park half a mile away.
But imagine a pub full of happy people. It would be un-English. Most are either miserable or anticipating misery. Getting drunk and shouting isn’t happiness either; it’s a way of shutting out quotidian boredom.
How about an unhappy hour with lager brewed in the UK at twice the price? “Share your meaninglessness with us,” would have some takers I’m sure.
I'd show up for the unhappy hour. As long as the booze was discounted. But for an unhappy hour it would likely be more expensive than usual.
ReplyDeleteColette: The booze would be twice the price, the floor would be unswept, the barman would be on parole for Health and Safety offences, the music would be G&S, the loo would be doorless and your handbag would be stolen.
ReplyDeleteBut why? Your blog post and your comments are those of a confident, well-adjusted Floridian. I doubt you have Pharisaical tendencies (ie, "God, I thank you that I am not like other men"). It could be that you are insanely happy most of the time and need a little contrast. Or perhaps - No, please not that! - you intend to write a novel and are doing research.