'It’s awful': a night out in Newcastle as 10pm curfew comes into play

Newcastle’s Bigg Market is the party hub of a party city. To imagine what it looks like on a Friday night, add three parts William Hogarth’s Beer Street, which depicts idyllic boozy bonhomie that any city would envy, to one part Hieronymus Bosch hellscape. It is a heady cocktail, beloved by locals and tourists. “Noisy, busy and happy” is how one of the local street pastors, who through volunteering to assist the drunk and vulnerable sees the worst and best of Bigg Market, describes a typical night.

At 10pm on Friday, the party stopped. The North East is experiencing a particularly sharp upswing in Covid-19 cases, and the Government has imposed various restrictions in response. Among those restrictions is the rule that pubs, clubs, restaurants and bars must close by 10pm – effectively a curfew.

As dusk turned to dark on the curfew’s first night, there were as many police in the historic stepped marketplace as there were members of the public. The evening would usually be revving up at this point, with bar-hoppers chatting and laughing over the thumping music emanating from basement dancefloors. Tonight the packs of strutting boys and clattering girls were all but absent. Most of the few people on the street were couples on quiet evenings out.

The place would usually be “rammed”, said Dan Walker, 27, who had just been to a comedy show with his girlfriend, 28-year-old Kloe Wilson. Every member of the audience had had to wear face shields. The strange emptiness of Bigg Market, he said, was “the way it should be for the situation that we’re in.”

A couple of hundred yards down the hill, a few freshers were smoking outside Bijou, a bar on Mosley Street. They were some of the first to arrive of this year’s Newcastle University intake, the majority of whom get here next week. The new arrivals will find that security guards are patrolling the six-person flats to which freshers are assigned, breaking up gatherings and throwing out interlopers. “And if there are big parties,” said Jamie Harrison, an 18 year old business student from Yorkshire, “the police turn up.”

He talked phlegmatically and a little sadly about the restrictions, put out his cigarette, and returned to the well-spaced seating inside, where, as usual, his interactions would be closely watched by security staff.

Two girls, vigorously chatting, approached the bar. How was their night going?

“C---, honestly!” said the first, Alicia James, 18.

“It’s awful!” said the second, Chelsea Deighton.

At this point in the night they should be “dancing around” (James’ words), “getting absolutely mortal” (Deighton’s). But with 20 minutes remaining before 10pm, they had time for just one more drink.

Both women felt that the North East had been unfairly singled out, and Deighton, also 18, doubted that their age group would be fully compliant. “If they can’t go out and party in a place like this, a town, they’re going to do it in a house instead.”

The new rules, said James, were “the right thing and the wrong thing at the same time.”

At least it wasn’t her birthday. Back on Bigg Market, Lorna Snowden, a newly-minted 21-year-old, was leading her friends across the square. They had come to Newcastle from Manchester, where they are students at Manchester Metropolitan, for a birthday weekend that had been booked before the new restrictions were imposed.

How was Snowden’s 21st treating her? “C---, because of lockdown. Brilliant, because I’ve got some lovely presents, but 10 o’clock – Tesco’s open later than that! I can’t believe it!”

The bells of Newcastle Cathedral tolled 10. The final punters had been ushered out of the hostelries, and a couple of dozen of them, mostly freshers, congregated outside the cathedral. The police, who like the door staff here are genial masters of de-escalation, gently reminded the youngsters of the rules. Slowly but surely, they dispersed. Bigg Market fell quiet.

Because nightlife involves crowding, shouting, singing and disinhibition, it is likely to be a powerful vector for infection. The curfew ought to help, but the costs are considerable. Newcastle’s night-time economy is worth an annual £340m to the city, supporting 4,000 jobs and offering a setting for the revelry that so many people look forward to each week. Giving it up is no mean sacrifice, yet for the most part it has been done with exemplary commitment to the public good.

Zafer Saygilier owns three local bars and had just seen the students, who in a pandemic-free world would be making this one of his most profitable weeks of the year, being dispersed two hours before midnight. Did he envisage things returning to normal soon?

“I hope so, but this is a pandemic, mate. We’re fighting something I don’t think anyone fully understands yet. It’s for the greater cause – we have to dig deep.”

On my way out of the city centre, I passed one more couple: he in black tie, she in a white jacket over a… wedding dress! Hours earlier, Neil and Bobbi Athey had wed at Alnwick, a pretty village in Northumberland. They were going to have a wedding of 80, then had to cut it down to 30. New cases continued to increase in number.

“Then we were like, ‘Sod it! Us and two witnesses,’” said Bobbi happily.

Neil looked at his new wife and grinned. “It’ll take more than a pandemic to stop us getting married, aye?”