Over the last few weeks we, like you, have been mulling over how best to continue on with life, to have a routine, and to keep up some semblance of normality. For us, this has been quite hard to grapple with considering our chief goal here at Publin is to advise you about pubs that you might like to go visit. Obviously for now those visits aren’t quite possible.
But, aspiring to those visits in the future are important and this is why we’re going to get back started with a more regular stream of Publin material, exploring the culture, history, and heritage that these pubs have to offer. This will hopefully keep you a bit entertained on a topic we know that you love, but it’ll also convince you of the importance of supporting your favourite or local pub once we have a safe opportunity to do so.
In a time where society will undoubtedly change and in the short term we find other ways to interact and come together, we shouldn’t lose sight of what we should be aspiring to in the future and the aspects of community that draw us closer and give us so much enjoyment. Part of that is the pub, what it means to our friend groups, to our capacity for bonding, and our society as a whole. It’s something we’ve never needed more but must give up temporarily for the greater good.
We’ve seen people come to together in extraordinary ways so far and we’re going to see even more of it very soon. We’re coming together in a way that transcends our social class, our geography, our age, and our tastes. We can do this so readily because we’ve had years of experience of it, coming together to create shared experiences in pubs around the country. It’s in these social spaces that we learn a lot about ourselves and others. We learn about how to discuss topics, how to drop topics, how to respect the arguments and ideas of others, and how to explore our own thoughts.
Nothing can replace the Irish pub experience. It’s hard enough to replicate it in physical terms in locations outside of Ireland in the real world. So a digital text version over a of it here is a poor copy. But it’s worth keeping alive our grá for the institution of the Irish pub so that we know that the community that we’re going to build up online in the coming weeks will be rewarded with a trip to somewhere we can embrace, and discuss all that has transpired over the last while . And we’ll do that in the best place we know…the pub.
