You deserve to experience the joy of bringing a book to the pub

I learned how to enjoy going to the pub on my own.

Not because I had to. Not because I'd fallen out with my mates or suddenly become some mysterious bloke who sits in the corner nursing the same pint for four hours. I just wandered into my local one afternoon with a book, ordered a pint and realised that once you get over the completely irrational fear that everyone is staring at you, it is one of the most relaxing places in the world to spend an hour or two.

Honestly, it's like a superpower. Somewhere along the line we've convinced ourselves that doing anything on your own is a sign that something has gone wrong.

Sitting in a pub alone? Bit odd. Going to the cinema on your own? Must have been stood up. Eating in a restaurant without company? Someone should probably check you're alright.

Yet those same people will happily spend half a day's annual leave sitting in a coffee shop on their own with a laptop open, nursing a flat white that cost more than a decent pint, pretending to write the next bestselling novel while actually scrolling Instagram.

Over the last couple of weeks I've spent more time than usual in pubs, some for one pint, others where the exact number is best left between me and the barman (they sign some kind of confidentiality notice I am sure), and I've seen something that makes me ridiculously happy.

More and more people are doing the same thing. They're walking in on their own with a book tucked under their arm, ordering a drink and quietly disappearing into another world for an hour.

What has struck me most is that it isn't just older regulars either. I'm seeing people in their twenties doing it, people my age and everyone in between. Maybe we're finally rediscovering that being on your own and being lonely are two completely different things.
As an investigative journalist, I spend my working life drowning in information. Court documents, reports, spreadsheets, leaked emails, witness statements, endless PDFs that seem to have been designed specifically to push you to the end of your tether.

My brain is constantly trying to piece together the next story or work out what everybody else has missed. You'd think the last thing I'd want to do in my spare time would be read another thing, but sitting in a pub somehow changes everything.

At home, there is always something demanding my attention. The washing up. That email I forgot to send. The lightbulb I've been meaning to replace for three weeks. Somehow sitting with a pint in a proper local gives your brain permission to slow down.

I'm fortunate because my friends completely get it. Most weekends they're in the pub too, but there's never any expectation that we all have to sit around the same table from first pint to last orders.

Sometimes they're chatting while I'm fifty pages into a book at another table. Now and then one of us wanders over, we spend five minutes taking the absolute piss out of each other or solving Britain's problems with absolutely no qualifications to do so, and then we drift back to whatever we were doing.

Occasionally, in what is surely peak twenty-first-century behaviour, we'll even have a conversation via the pub WhatsApp group while sitting about three feet apart, usually because somebody has committed a particularly serious breach of pub etiquette that requires immediate consultation. Don't even mention Guinness Shandy Day. There are wounds that haven't fully healed.

That's what I love about a proper pub. It doesn't demand anything from you. You can be sociable without constantly socialising. You can have a conversation or you can have complete silence. You can read a chapter, watch the cricket, stroke somebody's dog, exchange a nod with one of the regulars and feel part of the place without ever feeling like you're performing for anyone.

There is a man who drinks in my local and I think his name is Jeff, we've been nodding to one another for five years or so now and it was only when I dropped an airpod a few weeks ago and he handed it back to me that I learnt he was a Brummie!

I think we've lost the art of being comfortably alone. Not lonely. Alone. There's a huge difference.

We've become so conditioned to fill every spare moment with noise, notifications and endless scrolling that simply sitting with our own thoughts feels somehow uncomfortable. The irony, of course, is that once you get over that first ten minutes, it's incredibly liberating.

Nobody is judging you. Nobody is wondering why you're there on your own. In fact, they're far too busy worrying about whether you're judging them.

The other thing I've realised is that if we genuinely care about saving our local pubs, then we need to stop thinking they only exist for Friday nights, birthday drinks or the annual Christmas get-together that's organised in a WhatsApp group with forty-seven messages asking who's coming.

Pubs survive because people use them. They survive because somebody pops in for one pint after work, because someone fancies reading the next chapter of their book somewhere with a bit of atmosphere, because someone wants to sit quietly for an hour surrounded by the gentle soundtrack of glasses clinking, conversations drifting across the room and a dog hopefully staring at whoever looks most likely to drop a crisp.

So if you've never done it, I'd genuinely encourage you to give it a go. Take the book that's been sat on your bedside table for six months, leave your headphones at home, order yourself a decent pint and claim a quiet corner. It will probably feel slightly awkward for the first thirty seconds. Then you'll realise you've stumbled across one of life's simplest pleasures.

For me, learning to enjoy a pub on my own wasn't about escaping other people. It was about becoming comfortable in my own company.

Once you've cracked that, it's incredibly difficult to lose, and it makes the time you do spend with friends even better.

Although, for the avoidance of doubt, if anyone orders another Guinness shandy, I reserve the right to break my silence.
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