Children would replicate the same thing on their school exercise-books and elsewhere. I suppose it was a lingering hangover from the Second World War, which had only finished twelve years before I first went to school in 1957. Or perhaps from National Service, which was coming to an end. Bored conscripts might well be very concerned as to whether beer were available. 'Wot, No Beer?' must have been a popular catchphrase of the time.
People were still drawing Chads in the first half of the 1960s, then you never saw any more.
Where's this going? Well, it's not that I care greatly whether draught beer is available or not (because I don't drink it). I am however rather bemused by the latest news that pubs may have to be shut again if schools are reopened. What can possibly be the connection?
The underlying purpose is of course to prevent people becoming more exposed to virus infection than they need be. But I don't see how children going back to school has much to do with adults enjoying a gin and tonic - or a pint of beer - in their local pub.
Are they saying that children, the little beasts, are all symptomless carriers of Covid-19, and that they'll cross-infect each other then take it home? And then their parents - infected to saturation-point by their own kids - will flock to the pubs and pass it on to the other adults they'll meet there? Wiping out entire communities?
I would have thought that most adults with young children can't find the cash to afford regular visits to pubs. And probably wouldn't like to leave their kids alone in the house anyway. (I never hear of paying for babysitters nowadays) In fact, I wouldn't be surprised to hear that a lot of pub regulars are single people who don't have much child-contact, and it won't matter to them if the schools do reopen.
Perhaps the government expert behind this 'open the schools but close the pubs' idea reckons that the older schoolkids will be sneaking under-age into pubs and spreading it around.
Well, I hope nothing comes of the idea. Forget beer. Pubs are terrifically useful as places to eat lunch, have a coffee, and go to the loo. It would definitely be a bad move to shut them again.
Footnote
Intrigued, I did a quick Wikipedia search on Chad and discovered this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kilroy_was_here. The particular information on Chad is about halfway through. It seems to have become, in its latter years of use, a popular way of commenting on rationing shortages. Surprising then, that we haven't seen Chads everywhere in modern times. You know: 'Wot, no PPE?' or 'Wot, no HRT patches?' and so on.
