Susan Morrison: Closing time at 10.30pm! How did we cope?

Back in the 80s, I worked in Liverpool. It was a tough time for the Liver Bird. The city was frankly a bit battered.

Last orders in Liverpool was 10.30pm in the 1980s (Picture: AFP/Getty)

A break would have been hard to organise to a city that had only one famous hotel, The Adelphi, an old survivor from the age of the ocean liners. She had seen better days.

There was literally nothing to do in the evening. The pubs shut at 10.30pm. There was Pizza Hut or a chippy. That was about it for your fine dining choices.

Presumably that’s why 1980s adverts were full of cool-looking young dudes heading for that city break to a hotel room they were not intending to leave.

We all know what they were up to and I can tell you right now, that behaviour was just not acceptable in a Saltcoats boarding house.

Things are all change now, of course. City centres bulge with hotels, restaurants and bars ready to take your cash and convert it to calories. Staff smile and welcome you. Some of them even have local accents.

Well, you’ll have to excuse me now, for I am off do what every tourist should do. I have a map of Bristol and I intend to walk slowly along the busiest pavements I can find.

I shall, of course, stop with absolutely no warning at all. I shall insist my husband stands on the other side of aforementioned busy city street whilst I take his photograph, and I shall take an age to do so.

Oh yes, I am off to be a tourist in a city, and we all know how to do that. We, the people of Edinburgh, have learned at the hands of masters …