During his brief visit to see The Wife and I on our Parisian holiday, my old college roommate, Jo, sadly confirmed Theodore Dalrymple’s contention that the English pub after dark was no place for a family man:

The little town where I now live when in England transforms by night. By day, it is delightful; I live in a Queen Anne house that abuts a charming Elizabethan cottage near church grounds that look as if they materialized from an Anthony Trollope novel. By night, however, the average age of the person on the street drops from 60 to 20, with few older people venturing out. Charm and delight vanish. Not long ago, the neighborhood awoke to the sound of a young man nearly kicked to death by other young men, all of whom had spilled forth from a pub at 2 AM.

Every empire falls, true, but in today’s age of information the fall is shamefully witnessed by all.