EMERGING from the cold concrete gloom of a multi-storey car park, a bitterly long winter and three months of lockdown, the door opened to reveal the sights, smells and sounds of a sunny beer garden. I stood for a moment to drink in the atmosphere, enviously admiring the cool frothy pre-noon pints, while the ‘Hallelujah Chorus’ from Handel’s Messiah played in my head. The sun shone on the customers of The Bishops’ Mill, a ‘Spoons pub in the Walkergate complex, while people queued for a seat so they could order their beers using a mobile phone app. Three Durham students, Austin Seck, Joshua Dexter and Kenneth Ong, could barely believe their luck when they arrived as the Blue Moon beer was showing up as ‘free’.