The pub ('public house', bar), for me, is a kind of replacement for the Church of England. It, together with the night club, is the primary social centre or heart of the nation. To the accompanyment of alcohol, tobacco fumes {since banned}, and rock music, here is where people meet.

In the White Hart where we are staying, the 'residents' apart, the same people come night after night. Mostly men come though sometimes their girlfriends and wives too. Rarely do women come on their own.

As the church is the extension of the Christian family, so the pub is the extension of the secular family...minus children, for there are none in the pub. There the conversation is very banal.

The ones who come without women are very lonely - the barmaid becoming the symbolic substitute mother, girlfriend, or agony-aunt. She - the barmaid - is the substitute soul, and more than a mere bar-tender. Problems are laughed away or drowned in alcohol.

The whole atmosphere is fake in a way, an escape from reality; this is the secular substitute for church. I find it a very depressing, artificial atmosphere - cheap, in a way, and of course, very worldly. Here Bacchus rules along with hosts of other demons. I shall be glad to be away from it.

(From the Diary of Lev-Tsiyon, 15 October 2003, England)