Thanks a lot, Ali G, for ruining my bank holiday. I'm not talking about the TV version, the no-brains from Staines. I'm talking about his real-life brothers. The white brothers who use slang straight from Kingston, Jamaica. The blokey blokes in baseball caps who have kidnapped our character pubs and blackmailed the breweries (with their wads of cash) into turning our locals into "sports bars" showing 24-hour football from around the world. It's down to this tracksuit army that I am writing this column on bank holiday Monday, grumpy and alone in my office - instead of watching Spartacus on telly with my mates, and trying to digest a belly full of pub roast chicken with all the trimmings. Do I sound like Harry Enfield's dad? Well, I don't care. After today's disaster, I might even start fantasising about John Major's vision of England - all little and villagey, warm and welcoming.
What happened was this: a few of us decided to take our kids for a nice walk and then go for that quintessential Sunday classic, the "pub lunch".
Not being regular pub-goers, we just assumed that places which sell beer, are not too filthy and serve tolerable hot dinners to hungry passing families still existed. My rumbling stomach is noisy testimony to the opposite: acid proof of how hard it is to get pub grub within (wait for it) a ten-mile radius of my house.
After our walk, we all set off optimistically at 2pm for lunch. Half a mile down the road a sign read: "FOOD ALL DAY. SUNDAY ROAST JUST £6.95." We went to the bar, ordered a load of drinks and asked for the menu.
"Sorry, no food today."
"But your sign says you do food all day."
"Yep, we do."
Craig paused, trying to see if the barman was being facetious. He was. "Then can we order some food?"
"No." He explained that the chef had pulled a sickie, so the kitchen, by pure bad luck, was closed.
Safe in the knowledge that the day was yet young and the area full of pubs to choose from, we set off again. The next half-mile boasted four mega-pubs. Their signs read: "All day sport!", "Tequila and Tottenham Night!", "Sports Bar".
The kids were hot and irritable. So were the dads.
Then, like a doctor on an NHS ward, the sight we'd stopped daring to dream about appeared. "Freehouse. Home-made Sunday roast available. Children welcome."
Out came the kids, out stumbled the sweaty, drink-deprived dads, in went the mums-in-need-of-a-double.
"Hi. We'd like five menus, please."
"Sorry, there's no food." Why? The landlord then uttered that eternally British phrase: "I'm afraid we stopped serving at three." Watches were whipped towards faces. Jaws drooped miserably. It was 3.01.
To say we became desperate is an understatement. Suddenly, the revolt over food on I'm a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here! no longer seemed so precious or laughable. It's not funny, the panic that sets in when the pancetta and Pinot Grigio class are suddenly denied instant food or wine when they (OK, we) produce our credit cards. Couples began to bicker.
"I never wanted to go to a pub in the first place," I heard myself whine.
There were lots of other pubs we ventured to before admitting defeat and going our separate ways. Two had hot food but children weren't allowed inside to eat it. Another (despite the "all day" sign on the pavement) had stopped serving at 2.30; the rest were amusement arcades specialising in alcopops.
The different couples that made up our group drifted off to argue about "who's going to cook, then?".
English bank holidays are crap.
