Boozy Brits and Night Buses

I like to tell people that I feel very safe here. It's like a weight has been lifted and I have relaxed. It didn't happen at once. Seeing people fall asleep with their bags open on the underground would astound me at first. But, slowly and cautiously, I seem to have let my guard down and at some time in the past few weeks I relaxed completely about security. My bag hangs down open. I will walk an empty street at night. I don't double-lock my doors at night anymore.

Several things have helped me get that relaxed. The first of course is that every inch of the centre of London is monitored by CCTV. There are signs everywhere warning us that we're on candid camera. And when there is crime (usually outside the city centre), there is footage of it and people get caught.
But other, not so obvious, things may even have a greater hand in it. The most surprising of these to me, is that London is a 24 X 7 party capital!

When I say I'm Brazilian people always look at me with envy and awe in their faces and ask about all the partying Brazilians do. Since this appears to be something to boast about, I'm not going to contradict them but the amount of late-night action going on in the Soho, Covent Garden, Oxford Street triangle, is on par with Carnaval on any day. And we're talking about every night here! Well, maybe not Mondays.

It's incredible! No matter how late, there are always people wandering, stumbling or not making their way home. Lots of people. I can walk the 15 or so minutes from Soho feeling like its mid-afternoon, except of course that the crowds tend to weave a little and may sometimes be a wee bit louder too.

Buses are the same way. There are the infamous night buses here in London, which run the regular main routes after midnight. There have been night bus survival guides published in the newspapers, love stories have sprung from night buses and several regulars have Night-bus buddies, which always seem to be going home with them at 5 am every Thursday, Friday, Saturday... But the buses are packed. They might be gross -- you have a lot of people still learning to drink, and all the problems that rise with that, -- but they are safe. And if any guy comes up to bother you, they're usually so drunk, they're quite harmless.

And of course the main reason all this happens is because Holy Crap these people drink! I can't keep up and I've stopped trying, at the risk of committing a huge faux pas.

Sometime in the not-so-distant past, some idiot created "rounds". Rounds are pure evil disguised as being friendly. It works like this: A group of about 5 of us go to a pub. One person will offer to pay and get everyone's drinks. Then as soon as one of the five has finished, he or she will do the same for the rest, and so on... until everyone has paid a round for all five ... and then you start again.
So, you're always drinking at the pace of the fastest drinkers AND you always accept a drink, because that way, everyone pays the same.. more or less. If you refuse a drink, it makes you look cheap, because then people will think you're trying to get out of paying their drink. UGH!!!

No wonder there are all these completely shit-faced people everywhere. The larger the group, the more you drink! Everyone has to pay their round. If you go out in 7 people, you're going to drink 7 drinks! On top of it all, drinks are relatively cheap. A pint of beer is notoriously expensive at the equivalent of 5 dollars. But a gin and tonic is just about the same price! So is a coke. Doesn't make sense, right? So, if the intent is to party, young people are going to spend their 3 pounds on scotch and gin, rather than a larger or wine. More bang for your buck.

The BBC is going to air a series, along the lines of Super-size Me (the fast-food documentary), following a 30-something drinking as much as her 20-something friends, every night for a month. Apparently that equals an average of (each girl, per night!) 5 glasses of wine, 3 Smirnoff Ice-type drinks, 4 shots of tequila, 2-3 pints of larger followed by 2 or 3 mixed drinks like gin and tonics or rum and coke. She says she aged 10 years during those 30 days.

So... at the risk of seeming cheap and rude, I declined an offer for someone to pay a round last Saturday. I did, however, offer to buy them something later on... which they declined. Ooops. Just blame the Brazilian... she has no idea what she's doing. But at least she looks good!!!