And so to York, where the powers that be are trying to ban buskers from letting drunk people grab their microphones and sing their tuneless hearts out. Yes, the buskers, already subject to a fair few rules of their own, are now being given laminated cards that will state that they are “not allowed to hand over their microphone”, according to a report that was discussed by councillors in York on Tuesday evening and which surely met with resounding support, because everyone recognises the forcefield of power that a laminated card can wield against a drunk idiot doing what they want to. Oh.
Ah, but we must not mock, for it has been a busy few years for York’s fun police and they are weary. First, the town’s officials warned, in 2015, that the city centre was becoming a “no-go area” at weekends, with hen parties and stag dos descending from Newcastle and Sunderland to do their boozing within the walled city. Then they banned alcohol from certain incoming trains, to stop these groups from pre-loading, and even tasked the coppers with asking hen parties to deflate the inflatable pink penises they liked to carry with them, in what can only have felt like some kind of reverse breathalyser procedure.
Now, in their latest ruse against the disorderly, you’re not even allowed to grab a busker’s microphone and bellow out three verses of Wonderwall. And it is always Wonderwall.
I know that binge drinking can bring with it all sorts of social ills (such as hangovers), but it does seem that the problem here is perhaps not the drunk and disorderly behaviour, but, rather, York’s very high opinion of itself. I grew up there and it’s a town that has always hoiked up its bosom and tutted at all of its northern colleagues, believing itself far superior to the industriousness of Leeds and Bradford, or the noise of Newcastle, or the spelling of Scunthorpe. (Because if you take the S off – oh never mind.)
Which was odd, because the York I knew was one staffed by cheery publicans who came round the pubs on the dot of 11.15pm, to bark at us to “sup up and fuck off”, a sentence that has been ringing in the back of my memory like music ever since and which I want announced over a Tannoy at the end of my funeral. Or they would ask: “What have you come as?”, a line regularly deployed by Yorkshire folk who wish to inform you that your idea of high fashion is their idea of fancy dress.
Still, towns such as York believe themselves vastly superior because of their medieval cathedrals or minsters; their Roman streets and Viking remains. It is these buildings and these old cobbled streets that the history tourists come from far and wide to coo over, while the stags and hens, at least in York, come from slightly nearer towns to crawl around the historic alehouses on their hands and knees. Town councillors now believe that these two disparate groups cannot coexist in harmony.
Yet the great irony they appear to be missing is that these two groups should be shoved up against each other whenever possible, aided and abetted by inflatable penises and microphones if needs be. If tourists come to England to get a whiff of our Roman and Viking history, can’t they see that it’s alive and well in these marauding tribes of pissed people roaming the streets?
I mean, history is hardly the tale of people sitting primly because they think their house might accrue Grade I-listed status in 1,400 years’ time. It’s the story of pillaging and plundering, of wickedness and greed. History means armies marching with terrified intent and mead halls resounding to the sound of their drunken revelry after half their mates were slain in the battle. I could be wrong, but I don’t really think an inflatable penis holds a candle to all this – although I would like to see what happens if you hold a candle to an inflatable penis and will be adding this to my spreadsheet of “Ways in Which Hen Parties Could Entertain the Tourists” immediately.
In fact, the spreadsheet is quite full already, because Eboracum, the Roman version of York, was formed after 5,000 men marched up from Lincoln to do a deal with the Celtic Queen Cartimandua and her imperilled matriarchy – just think of the interactive theatre potential if we can get the hens and the stags to act out this one. It would be educational and helpful for my seven-year-old daughter, who is depressingly impressed by queens and royal families and all of their riches. When I tell her that these buggers ascended to their thrones via blood and butchery and the removal of heads, it tends to meet with some surprise.
All right, so perhaps I shouldn’t have done it in a speech before she was allowed to blow out the candles at her princess-themed birthday party, but, you know, there’s just never a good time for these things. Anyway, it’s important for children and town councils to learn: we cutesify history at our peril. We are filthy, feasting humans and our city centres are ransacked by our pleasure and our pain, same as it ever was.
