It has become known as “Mad Friday”: the Friday before Christmas when all hell breaks loose on the streets of the UK as festive revellers spill out of packed bars and, in some cases, into A&E.
Emergency services were warning the public to stay safe on what is, for many, the last working day before a Christmas break – also known as “Frantic Friday” or “Black Eye Friday”, and one of the busiest nights of the year for the NHS and police.
In the Welsh town of Wrexham, police issued a dispersal order in anticipation of trouble over the weekend and increased antisocial behaviour patrols on Friday in an attempt to quell drunken stupidity.
But the city of Hull is taking another approach, having put together a Low Ale Trail: a pub crawl of 35 venues offering low- or no-alcohol drinks.
There are three trails across different areas of the city: the Old Town, the Avenues, and the theatre quarter and Ferensway. Combined, these include many of the city’s most popular watering holes, from stylish cocktail bars to historic boozers.
In the Brain Jar, an Old Town cocktail bar, Linda Chambers, a Lib Dem councillor, was served a non-alcoholic mojito, one of many mocktails on the menu.
“I worked in healthcare over Christmas and I regularly saw the results of drinking and driving,” said Chambers, who holds the portfolio for public health in the city. She said it was not just the results of car accidents she came across when she worked in operating theatres but drunken slips, trips and falls, especially in icy weather.
The Low Ale Trail, developed as a partnership with local businesses and Hull BID (Business Improvement District), was also helpful to tackle alcoholism, she said, in a city where alcohol-related deaths were 21% above the national average.
“I think it’s a really good way of people being able to go out. The main thing at the moment is there are a lot of people in the city with drink problems,” Chambers said, adding that people being able to access alcohol-free options meant they could blend in with their friends and avoid difficult conversations or peer pressure from their group.
James Claxton, the owner of the Brain Jar, said there was a generational swing towards choosing low-alcohol options, partly as a result of the choice offered. “What we have on the menu are predominantly non-alcoholic cocktails and perhaps years ago, people would balk at spending money on something that doesn’t have alcohol in,” he said. “Now there’s a willingness to do that. In fact, people come in specifically for them. It’s a cultural shift.”
Furley & Co on Princes Dock Street has a sticker in the window reading “We are part of the Low Ale Trail!” and stocks a range of different beers, ciders and spirits that are low- or no-alcohol.
“Let me show you them,” the manager, Will Rust, said, coming back with more than half a dozen bottles of alcohol-free beer from popular brands. He said it was as important to offer good options for the non-drinkers as those who were drinking alcohol. “It’s responsible to offer it. You don’t want them to miss out. They can still go out and enjoy a nice drink.”
It is good business, too. The sales of these drinks are high, making up 25%-30% of the drinks trade at Furley & Co, the bar’s owners estimate.
Further along the Low Ale Trail it may only be early afternoon, but the historic pub Ye Olde White Harte is clogged with Mad Friday drinkers. One group of men, from a rugby club, have been in the pub since lunchtime and are already shouting and chanting. Round the corner, avoiding the noise, is a group of colleagues from a local care home having a Christmas drink. Though they were drinking alcohol, they all said they would regularly have times when they would go out without drinking these days. They were particularly big fans of the alcohol-free versions of Old Mout cider, Peroni and Guinness.
Clare Riggs said these drinks had “come on leaps and bounds” in the last few years. “You sometimes can’t tell the difference.”
Jayne Gerrard, meanwhile, was starting with a glass of wine,but said she would soon be switching to non-alcoholic drinks because she had a busy day the next day. “I often will have non-alcoholic drinks later in the night,” she said. “And I don’t drink on week nights, so I’ll have alcohol-free prosecco through the week. They call it ‘nosecco’. It was [the TV presenter] Davina McCall who I learned about nosecco from. She buys it in crates, apparently, because she doesn’t drink.”
