16B, your description of the 'Goose' is pretty much as I remember it....
The idea that "...the nature of the place demands some after-hours drinking if one is to remain sane." would doubtless raise a few eyebrows in certain quarters. I don't agree that it 'demands' after-hours drinking; however, I do agree that if the messes and official 'pubs' don't meet your needs, then some reasonable alternative should be available.
A 'New Vic' as you describe would seem a good idea. But as an ex-inmate of the 1312 facility, I was always of the view that the Flt should be out of bounds to the Vic's patrons.
However, as a "(former) obsolete-airliner-driver", my days were not exclusively as a member of 1312 "spent on permanent Q, thereby not giving a **** WHAT bars were open." So I do have some sympathy - but the chief fault lay with the mess regulations which drove people underground.
Anway, no doubt much to the relief of many, I shall leave any further comment to those unfortunates who still have to spend their lives thousands of miles away defending the Bennies from the clear and present threat posed by the Argentine hordes some 23 years after the war ended.....
Of course there is such a threat, isnt't there......?