Going Cheap

When things are tough it’s time to reassess our options.

We’re not in a recession any more but the times of recession have caused the country a great deal of strain, and now that our fragile economy has been shattered by the banking crisis, like Humpty Dumpty we must pick up all the pieces and do our best to put it together again (boy, am I on a roll...).

This will be a long, slow and arduous task, and in a year’s time the cracks will still show, gaping chasms of weakness undermining our confidence in our nation’s financial system for years to come.

Naturally, these times of financial constraint force those of us on the lower end – economically speaking – to be more frugal, which is as it should be; the economy will be rebuilt in the City, not in the pockets of you and me.

Frugality leads us, the drinking classes, to value establishments, forcing us to test exactly how much ‘bang’ we can get for our ‘buck’.

This is precisely the sort of thinking that brought me, and indeed the huge number of other people I shared the bar with, into the Four Candles on George Street, Oxford, the other Friday night.

Cheap beer, cheap shots, cheap wine and cheap spirits.

These are the things that tend to make up any Wetherspoons, and are the reason people return night after night – to take advantage of drinks prices designed to help us enjoy our evenings out as much as possible.

The concept of pre-drink is, I would assume, a familiar one to many, but for the uninitiated it involves buying in some beers or spirits or something to drink at home with friends, getting yourself in the mood for a small outlay of money to ensure that you don’t have to spend too much in the club later that night.

It’s effective, though occasionally disastrous, and the Four Candles I see as the next step up. The Four Candles provides drinks cheap enough to ensure that you will be able to get yourself in the mood for a big night out without breaking the bank, a perfect place to exercise frugality and ensure that you stick to your budget. And yet the place itself has me asking why?

So I’ll tell you – there’s no music. I don’t understand this whatsoever. With the absence of any tunes (even a ‘soft’ selection designed to take the edge off the silence) all you can hear is the sound of other people drinking.

This makes me unbelievably uncomfortable; I never realised what an important part music plays in drinking until I noticed the absence of it.

And you know what? I don’t want to be reminded that we are all there to get as drunk as possible before heading off into the nightclubs and yet with the absence of any musical soundtrack to cushion the silence, this is all I can hear...

Personally I’d rather stay at home.