Pub Sessions Are A Delight - How To Have A Good Time At Pubs in Brighton

A pub session means playing music and/or singing in the relaxed social location of a local pub, in which the music-making is interacted with the intake of ale, stout, and beer and conversation. Performers sing and play traditional songs and tunes from the Irish, English and Scottish traditions, using instruments such as the fiddle, accordion, concertina, flute, tin whistle, uilleann pipes, tenor banjo, guitar, and bodhrán.

History of Pub Sessions All Around The World

Singing and drinking have occurred together from ancient times, but written evidence is scrappy until the 16th century. In Shakespeare's Henry IV, Hal and Falstaff discuss drinking and playing the "tongs and the bones". There are respectable depictions of pub singing in paintings by Teniers, Brouwers but

the best ones are by Jan Steen.

The 1830 Beer Act eliminated the levy on beer and rapidly doubled the number of pubs in England. The number peaked in the 1870s and declined after 1900. By the 1850s, a growing number of student songs and commercial song books were printed across Europe. The most famous was the Scottish Students' Song Book by John Stuart Blackie. The blend of traditional songs with hints of erotic humour remains to this day. The Irish tradition also benefited from the compilation of O'Neill's Music of Ireland, a compilation of 1,850 pieces of Irish session and dance music, published initially by Francis O'Neill in 1903.

One of the most popular drinking songs, "Little Brown Jug," dates from the 1860s. By 1908 Percy

Grainger had begun to record folk singers, but not in their natural habitat, the pub. In 1938A.L. Lloyd persuaded his employers at the BBC to record the singers in the Eel's Foot pub in Eastbridge, Suffolk.

At The Eel's Foot, the songs performed included: "False Hearted Knight", "The Dark-Eyed Sailor", "The Princess Royal", "The Foggy Dew", "Underneath Her Apron", "Pleasant and Delightful", "The

Blackbird." Astonishingly, one of the songs was "Poor Man's Heaven" an American IWW song Industrial Workers of the World, dating from about 1920. The oldest singer there was William "Velvet" Brightwell. In 1947 the BBC made more recordings there and broadcast them as "Anglia Sings" on 19 November 1947. Nearly all of the members were in their 50s and 60s. Six years later the first folk club opened in Newcastle upon Tyne, and the average age was in the 20s.

http://www.traditionalmusic.co.uk/pub-session-tunes/
http://www.uksessions.net/
http://findusfirst.media/listing/shepherd-dog-pub/
http://shepherdanddogpub.co.uk/

How Drinking Alcohol Affects Your Health: Good and Bad

Alcohol is created when grains, fruits, or vegetables are fermented. Fermentation is a process that uses yeast or bacteria to change the sugars in the food into alcohol. Fermentation is used to produce many necessary items, everything from cheese to medications. Alcohol has different forms and can be used as a cleaner, an antiseptic, or a sedative.

Scientists have long advertised the heart benefits of drinking small amounts of alcohol. Newer studies have credited moderate drinking with everything from helping to keep our minds sharp as we age to lowering our risk of developing diabetes.

Does It Help or Hurt?

Drinking alcohol can be decent for your health, but it can also be damaging. It all depends on how much you drink, your age, and other factors.

There's no denying that too much alcohol can lead to serious problems. Additional alcohol can increase your risk of:

• Liver disease
• High blood pressure
• High blood fats (triglycerides)
• Heart failure
• Stroke
• Fetal alcohol syndrome (if you're pregnant)
• Certain cancers
• Injury, violence, and death

If you regularly drink more than the recommended daily limits, it will risk damaging your health.

There's no guaranteed safe level of drinking, but if you drink less than the recommended daily limits, the risks of harming your health are low.

And it's certainly not only people who get drunk or binge drink that are at risk. Most people who repeatedly drink more than the NHS recommends don't see any harmful effects at first.

Alcohol’s hidden harms usually only arise after a number of years. And by then, serious health problems can have developed.

Liver problems, reduced fertility, high blood pressure, increased risk of various cancers and heart attack are some of the numerous harmful effects of regularly drinking more than the recommended levels.

But How Does it Positively Affect Us?

Moderate alcohol consumption may have some substantial health benefits.

According to the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, "moderate alcohol consumption is defined as having up to one drink per day for women and up to two drinks per day for men. This definition is referring to the amount consumed on any single day and is not intended as an average over several days."

So we’ve had our reasonable share of finding out why alcohol is bad for us, so here are some of the health benefits of heading down the Pubs in Brighton –

• It Can Lower Your Risk of Cardiovascular Disease
• It Can Lengthen Your Life
• It Can Improve Your Libido
• It Helps Prevent Against the Common Cold
• It Can Decrease Chances of Developing Dementia
• It Can Reduce the Risk of Gallstones
• Lowers the Chance of Diabetes

http://www.niaaa.nih.gov/alcohol-health/alcohols-effects-body
http://www.medicaldaily.com/7-health-benefits-drinking-alcohol-247552
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Coffee Shops Booming Whilst Pubs in Brighton are Falling

“We now spend more on coffee in a year than we do on our energy bills – and as the price of beans rises, we respond by becoming ever fussier about our drinks.” - The Independent newspaper claims.

Coffee Shops in Brighton 

Across Britain in the past year there were 245 new Costa Coffees, 160 Starbucks, 83 Caffe Neros and 78 openings by smaller chains, according to research by consultants Allegra Strategies. Overall, 566 branded coffee shops were launched, increasing the total by 25 per cent to 2,804.

So why pubs are struggling to make the last orders call, coffee shops are booming. In 1998, there were 61,000 pubs compared with 57,200 this April, a loss of 380 a year.

The difference between pubs and coffee shops are that coffee shops are lot more quant, they’ve also increased in terms of being a social hot spot.

“In a coffee shop you have a convivial atmosphere without the alcohol or the rowdiness. I would not go to the pub for a coffee, I would go for a pint," says Kavanagh.

He also believes coffee shops have been boosted by people shopping more online. Instead of spending their Saturdays trawling the shops, Brits are meeting up with friends at their local cafe.

Pubs in Brighton

In comparison, the number of pubs in Britain has been in steep decline for a number of years. ‘The Campaign for Real Ale’ says British pubs are closing at the rate of 31 a week, although many are now fighting back by improved food and by serving breakfast and coffee throughout the day.

The one Pub based company that have fully sussed it is J D Wetherspoon. Wetherspoons was founded in 1979 with over 900 pubs around Britain, including 2 pubs in Brighton. It claims to be "the only large pub firm which opens all its pubs early in the morning", serving breakfast and coffee as well as a full food menu into the evening.

Pubs claim that they are losing their business to Wetherspoon a lot more than they are losing it to coffee shops...  "I have lost 50 per cent of my business to Wetherspoon – coffee shops haven't affected it all," says pub owner of the Corner House Bar, Omar Tahiri.

The customers at the bar say that people are more likely to drink alcohol at home whereas they will go out for a well-made coffee.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1078435/Coffee-shops-boom-consumers-refuse-daily-brew-despite-credit-crunch.html
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/retailandconsumer/leisure/11084328/Why-coffee-shops-are-replacing-pubs-in-Britain.html
http://www.shepherdanddogpub.co.uk/
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