The old pub was quiet tonight.

The usual array of rowdy and habitual drinkers seemed to have deserted their local and gone out searching for pastures new.

That was something of a relief.

I'd planned on just a couple of Boddingtons and an early night, an often difficult agenda with Mickey Farnworth and his demented crew about.

I was getting much too old and slow to give him a slap around his thick head. I'd very likely get one back, with added interest.

But, thankfully, they had all decided on one of their infamous town excursions and left the relieved locals alone with a quiet nights drinking.

The Fleece was a comfortable pub situated on the corner of Carlisle Street, a good two and a half miles from the bustling town centre of Eastham-Gate. The surrounding area was populated with the few remaining occupied and vacant houses that hadn't yet been turned into rubble by the contractors the local council had cynically employed.

I and a few of the other families remaining on the street had stuck resolutely to our guns until common sense and resignation had seen us reluctantly give in to the councils statutory offers for our old, but comfortable, terraced homes.

We were all taking our time scrutinising the local estate agents for new accommodation and invariably trying to postpone the inevitable. Relocation.

A new, ugly tinderbox council estate would be filling the gap left by the buildings that had bravely staved off two world wars, endless governments and even Premier Thatcher’s extreme revisionist policies. As far as I was concerned each government was a replacement rotting tooth, the decay just varying in depth and corruption.

I do tend to tar every political party with the same tired brush, in sixty-six years I'd never been content under any of the self serving bastards and I was pretty damn confident I never would be.

It seemed that politics and post-modern progression was isolating and dividing us into communities of wary and trustless strangers, whose main concern was affluence and contempt for communal spirit. We were being split by greed and a new gutless, independent class system that was rooted deep like a virulent, incurable cancer. It was simple. The working classes were being divided, yet again. Set apart and callously pigeonholed by the government and railroaded into legislated segregation and borderline poverty. At my age I was old enough to recognise the changes for what they were and not what they were purported to be.

It could get too depressing if dwelled on it too long. Which I quite often did.

Inside, Colin Towns was sat perched on a stool next to the bar like some arthritic stick insect, half a woodbine hanging like a loose, burnt tooth from his thin mouth. At fifty-eight going on fifteen, Colin was one of the streets most colourful and sublime characters. At any night of the year you could depend on Colin's presence at the corner of the bar, a living, breathing fixture of the pub's warm, domestic atmosphere. An atmosphere that was sadly lacking in today's trendier establishments.

Singing a popular tune or two was one of Colin's favourite past times, he often accompanied himself on a pair of well bent and rusted dessert spoons. Most often very badly. But that was part of the entertainment, wasn't it?

I had spent many a long and inebriated night discussing a diversity of subjects with him that had prevailed into the early hours of the morning with ne'er a satisfying conclusion in sight. Probably because most of the time we hadn't a single clue what the hell either of us were talking about.

Terry, the landlord, was embroiled in a heated conversation with Colin; his liverish lips flapping like landed sturgeons. "Look, Gary Freckleton ish nowhere near ashh pacey assh Gallacher. He' shh a uselesh journeyman and ash fasht ashh Douggie Bader in an air raid!"

"Don't you bloody 'look' me, you half wit. The day you know owt about football I'll be plaiting sand with a couple o' knitting needles, so shut ya loud trap."

I was reluctant to interrupt, but it sounded like we were in for one of the long and protracted marathons that regularly finished with the rap of the milkman on the front door.

"Pint o Boddies Tez, please."

"Alright. How yar doin' mate, pint o' the usual then ish ith?" He was as usual failing miserably to disguise the slur in his deep, baritone voice. For some unknown reason Terry venomously denied he drank whilst serving, but he was absolutely useless at trying to hide the fact.

Nodding, I turned to Colin and offered him a friendly wink as Terry lumbered shakily over to the Boddingtons’s pump. "And how are you, Col?" I offered.

He paused then removed the unfiltered stump of a cigarette from his dry lips." Fine, mate, fine. Nowt to complain about apart from t' usual. And how's yerself?"

"One shixty-nine pleash," Terry answered before I could reply. I took the loose change out of my pocket and offered Terry the pile I'd calculated for the pint.

"Nothing to report. Haven't been out all weekend." I'd spent the most part of it reading a couple of library books that would need returning in the morning.

Across the bar Terry stood swaying like the trunk of some huge leafless tree, his lips parting uselessly as he tried to form words. "Whatsh brown and shhticky?"

I knew the reply would be a stick (or shhtick, in his case). He'd told me this particular joke earlier in the week but he'd obviously forgotten, or liked it so much that he had to repeat it at every given opportunity. Knowing Terry he had most probably inflicted it upon all of the Fleece's clientele as he did with every other amusing, or not, gag he'd picked up in the course of the day. Feigning ignorance we held up our hands and shook our heads quizzically.

A look of bewilderment rippled lazily across his brow as if he'd suddenly forgotten the purpose of standing there. We could actually see the light slowly fading behind his eyes, as if someone was inside there with a dimmer switch. Then, suddenly, the light flared and he wetly spluttered out,"A.......waith for it.......shhtick…a shhtick.... do ya get ith...eh, do ya get ith?"

Colin and I took this as our cue to erupt into what was obviously fake and unsubdued laughter whilst Terry bent dramatically backwards, clutching at his hefty sides and screaming comically, "a...shtick...shtick!

I took this as a cue to saunter off into the comparative safety of the snug.

Colin paused and stared somewhat enviously at my unsubtle retreat. I felt a shard of warm sympathy pang at my conscience. It didn't stop my indiscreet exit though.

That's how it is in the Fleece.

The snug basically lived up to its baptised name.

Inside it I became nestled in the warmth of my surroundings. I suppose that probably depended on your attitude towards pre-seventies decor. Mine bordered on the obsessive. The entire room was bathed in the aura of a bygone era; faded yellow floral wallpaper; thick, brown shag pile carpet; check patterned Formica tables; an electric bar fire; all lovingly representing the attitudes and simplicities of a quieter, uncomplicated, perhaps saner world.

In each corner of the room lava lamps glowed incandescently, casting warm shadows onto the fag burned carpet, shadows that swayed lazily in a steady, hypnotic rhythm. Ashtrays littered the tabletops like open, dusty mouths. I sat down and took a long and satisfying swallow of the strong bitter.

Perhaps in less than six months time this building would be a ruin of broken masonry and concrete. Where people had socialised and formed new relationships there would be nothing but glass and rubble. The whole street would have descended into the past of Eastham- Gates future, the only proof of its existence in the minds of people who would soon grow old and eventually become dust themselves.

It was depressing and negative but I couldn't alter the way I saw my world decaying and coalescing into a uniform of structure that other people, who had never walked my streets, envisioned. Time and men in suits were improving a world that I was as a part of as they were. But I was impotent and powerless to stop them changing something they had never even experienced or cared about. We were simple monopoly pieces that took no effort to move or modify. I'm getting mawkish again.

Outside the confines of the room I could hear the mumbling of coated conversations, only the slight changes in pitch separating the voices. I always felt a certain symbiosis with the meditational cacophony of the noises and the whole ambience of the place.

If I sat back and rested my eyes and felt the cold, spreading numbness of the bitter as it settled into my stomach I could dissolve into the charm of my familiar surroundings. It was ritual, but nonetheless a happy one.

Relaxing was never an issue once I'd made myself comfortable on this gently yielding, but ancient, bench. It seemed as if I'd slowly eased myself away from the complexities of modern life and melted into a quiet, euphoric oasis. It was apparent not just in this quaint, little public house, but in the whole area. To me, it had refused to erode and spoil like it seemed to have done in the rest of this deflated country.

This little hamlet had put up solid, but invisible barriers that had refused access to the high powered drive of this too fast, too cruel nation. Strangers passing through could feel the immediate difference as they wandered into this tiny part of Eastham-Gate, a calmness that relaxed the tenacious grip that fear and pessimism had had on their unsettled souls.

I've wandered many nameless streets watching children play innocently amongst the frightened adults, adults who see the future moving much too quickly towards them. They see time as a dark and unseen creature that devours their sparkling youth and spits out arthritic age without sympathy. I see time as a celebration of maturity, a realisation that we have learned from what we have seen.

Perhaps this is why I dwell too easily on my past and isolate myself from the outside world. Perhaps I am foolish to think I monopolise the optimism of community and the hatred of creative change. Perhaps I am just getting too old and too frightened myself.

Could it be that the future of life in Eastham-Gate is just developing into a new, more privileged society and it is freeing itself from the bonds of quiescent immobility? Is this why the future holds no merit with me until it is the past?

Perhaps I should begin to realise that I am frightened of change, I am wary of the future. But not because of the not being able to see what is coming towards me, but what I am leaving behind.

A moving, swaying darkness suddenly descended on the room, covering the furnishings and breaking the mood. "Fancy a game of darts you owd sod? Ya look a right miserable bugger sat in thee're on yer own." It was Tom Allison framed in the doorway, a pint in one hand and three arrows in the other.

"I've a bit of a headache lad; I'll see how I feel after this pint." I must have looked obviously below par because Tom just nodded, smiled and disappeared into the bar.

Light flooded back, splashing me with colours that blinded and stung my eyes. Outside a steady rain was falling onto a threatening world. We had to give them hope and promise for the future, not take it away before they had a chance to learn.

I, for one, didn't relish the thought of leaving this planet without understanding its merits; it’s many plusses. I suppose it was easy reflecting on the general, so-called absurdities of change and progression and resenting life for it. Much harder to accept them for what they were, what life would always be, always do. Change. Whether it be for better or for worse.

I looked at my pint glass and saw that it was half full rather than half empty. It seemed that once again I'd come out of the warmth of my home to depress myself with the complex worries of the world. Worries that I could not possibly begin to solve.

I suppose sometimes nothing changed at all really.

It was getting too much of a habit this dissection of life.

Time for more action and less words.

I picked up the smooth glass and finished off the rest of the now tepid beer, grimacing at the inordinate lack of refreshing bubbles.

Once again I was looking at the black rather than the white. Not fifteen yards away a long and comfortable bar stood supporting friends with similar necessities to me. A game of three-o-one was on the agenda.

I'd probably get badly thrashed, as usual, but who cared.

Like the main crux of things in my life at the moment, there was definitely room for improvement.