Drinking

Years ago there was a place in Monmouthshire where you could drink beer pretty well all day (not many people drank anything else - wine? never heard of it - whisky? that's for alcoholics). The reason for this was that certain pubs in one part of the town were in one county, certain others were in another, and they opened at different times to accomodate the miners finishing work at different times.... something like that.
In those days Wales was "dry" on Sundays. So what were all those Cardiff drinkers to do? Well they could (and would) walk to Rumney which was then in Monmouthshire and which was not dry (can't recall why - was it in England?). Lloyd George said Rumney, on a Sunday evening, was a den of iniquity and drunkeness (or words to that effect).
In other towns and cities of Wales on "dry Sundays" people - men I mean since women did not habituate pubs in those days - would , if they wished to drink, join clubs which were not "dry".
So in many ways it was no different then than now when, it seems, there is so much binge drinking. What is different however, is that then girls, young women did not, unless they were beyond shame, go out drinking as they do now. Blokes always did and now do, so they say, though I don't believe it, drink to excess. They always did.
I remember a young man who had snow white hair, big frame, pit worker, who'd come off his shift and go straight to the pub to sink about 16 pints of ale. He'd go home, sleep it off and be up the next morning (about six o'clock) for work. Every day, year in year out.
Yeah, good old "Snowy White", the Falstaff of Pontllanfraith!