Wishful drinking: pubs have always been good at bending the rules

In Tess of the d’Urbervilles, Thomas Hardy has a running skit about the alehouse in his heroine’s home village where her father, and quite often mother too, disappear for hours at a time. People aren’t allowed to drink on the premises, so are strictly limited to ‘a little board about six inches wide and two yards long, fixed to the garden palings by pieces of wire’. But as the locals don’t like drinking while standing outside, they all head into the landlady’s bedroom and perch on her bed, chest of drawers and washstand while supping ale. And if anyone comes to the door during these sessions, the landlady, as she hurries to answer, repeats loudly her pseudo-legal disclaimer: ‘A few private friends I’ve asked in to keep up club-walking at my own expense.’

I thought this was a comic evocation of a long-vanished culture. That was until the summer when I went into a pub in Plaistow, east London.