This is a dumb country

categories of notable absurdity:

1) if you want to check your email, you go to a pub. coffee houses, not pubs, are the natural habitat for computer work. Who wants to edit their daily papers while surrounded by riotous drunks? Who sends email when drinking anyway? Maybe we'd ought better not ask that question...

2) coffee houses tend to inhabit more modern structures, rather than the wood-pannelled tap-rooms whose infrastructure dates from the height of eighteenth-century inn architecture technology. I've spent part of the last half-hour wandering around the eighteenth-century pub overlooking the River Cam, searching for a power plug. The view is gorgeous, now that I've actually found one -- the only plug in the entire establishment?

3) bartenders are not tech support.