One of my favourite pastimes is whiling away the daytime hours listening to the cider-sodden stories of affable and perhaps mental patrons. The wisdom of the drinking classes is greater in sum than the wisdom of the political classes.
Those who clot outside the pub as the morning breaks aren’t usual or boring. You wouldn’t call them ordinary. Hostile newspapers call them scum. More discerning newspapers call them ‘problem drinkers,’ which is apt—they imbibe problems like they imbibe pints.
Here in Great Britain, we call these gentlemanly rogues, ‘characters’.
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