In 1997, after nearly 10 years off the booze, I started drinking again. The chronology and the reasoning behind all this are in this piece on my Compartments menu. It was also the year that my mother died. On Christmas Day 1997, before the big lunch, I had a few drinks at the local Parish Centre with my brother. He was visiting from Spain with his family, as he did most years from 1986 onwards. Unlike my brother and sister I had, until then, spent every Christmas Day with my mother. There was only one year (1984) when we were not in West London for the festivities. That year my father, mother, sister and I drove to Ireland to spend just under two weeks with family and friends all over the Republic. We all spent nights in Dublin and County Cork. My father spent a night or two in Kilkenny with his sister. My mother and I spent a night in Cavan, visiting cousins on her mother’s side. We returned to London in early January.

From 1997 onwards, for 22 of the next 23 years, you could find me at the bar at the local Parish Centre every Christmas Day, at least briefly. The exception was 2013, when we travelled to Spain to spend a week with my brother and his family, returning home on New Year’s Eve. The last time that we observed the tradition of the pre-lunch drink at the Parish Centre was 2019, even though we were having lunch at a nearby pub. It has not been possible to keep up the tradition since then. Pubs and bars were still closed in 2020 (Lockdown Year 1). In 2021 and 2022 I had Covid and was isolating. The Parish Centre reopened with reduced hours at some point in 2022 but has not been open on Christmas Day since then. Yesterday, for the first time since 2019, my son and I observed the tradition of the pre-lunch drink. We went for a walk around the block, partly so that I could see which shops were open. Most of the convenience stores within a 10-minute walk were open. I counted seven of them. All the local pubs were open too. We stopped at the nearest Irish bar, a place I have visited more often this year than any other pub, apart from the ones where I play music or host quizzes. It was about 2.50pm.

While we were walking I told my son about previous Christmas Day drinks. He remembers the visits to the Parish Centre. They were a common feature of his childhood, and his sister’s. We would usually attend 11 o’clock mass over the road and stop at the Parish Centre for an hour or two before heading home for lunch. Most years we brought sandwiches with us, to keep them going until the full sit-down lunch. The first year that I visited a bar on Christmas Day was 1980, the year I turned 18. My son is 21 and has done it many more times than I had at that age, even though we have not observed the tradition since he was 15.

In 1980 my father and I had a few pints at the Emperor, a place that featured in this piece from 2018. My brother was away in Spain that year, as part of his university degree, so it was the first year in my lifetime he was not around in December. The pub observed Sunday hours, more or less, open at noon and closed around 2pm. We were already a few pints in when one of the barmen came round with bottles of spirits, dishing out large measures of vodka, whiskey or gin. No mixers, just hard liquor. I had vodka with my Guinness. I had never done so before, but had been meaning to try it for a while. We just stuck to beer most of the time, rarely drank spirits at that age.

Between 1980 and 1986, my last full year on the beer for a while, there were occasional visits to the pub before Christmas lunch, but nothing really stands out. Yesterday my son and I stayed in the pub for about 90 minutes, three pints for me and a large Coke for him (he still doesn’t drink alcohol, which is fine by me). We were on our way out after about an hour but got chatting to some people we knew. It was still daylight, the crescent moon clearly visible, as it had been when we left the house around 2.30pm. The pub was due to stay open until at least 6pm. We were sat down for lunch before 5pm, the biggest meal I have eaten for a long time. I needed to take a walk again later, either side of 10pm, while the rest of the family watched both episodes of “EastEnders”. I walked further than my son and I had earlier in the day. Three of the seven convenience stores were still open. A restaurant-bar attached to a nearby hotel was still serving. If another six years go by before my next visit to a pub on Christmas Day it will be 2031. I hope we’re still around.