There are three pubs in my village, and I occasion (rather than frequent) two of them; the third is a place I have visited perhaps five times in five years, and I have never found any reason to linger.

The second overlooks the cricket green. During summer days you can buy a pint, walk over the road, and sprawl lazily in the warm sunshine on the grassy bank, watching the game progress; alas, by night it becomes a Sports and “Yoof” pub, enlivened by a handful of hardcore drinkers – but with a tariff rather too short for my tastes.

Some of the other customers leave much to be desired, too; on a Friday Karaoke evening some weeks ago, a 50 year-old sot sidled up to me, appraised my sports-coat and lack of football strip, and hazarded: “‘ere, are you a hoomersexual or summat?”.

I assessed him carefully. Punchy, but tanked. “No, I just happened to take a bath this morning. Why do you ask?” He shrugged and slunk back to his matchingly boozed girlfriend. Stuart answered my question for him: “Nah, nah mate, you don’t want to talk to him; he’s violent he is, he’s looking for a fight…”

“You don’t say, mate? Funny old thing, life…”

I’ve been back a few times since – I’ll be damned if I am going to be scared off a decent pint of bitter – and have encountered this plonker once since. He and his bottle-blonde partner went into a spontaneous and drunken “nudge-nudge wink-wink” routine, so evidently he lacks common sense as well as observational skills; there’s probably an inferiority complex in there too, given that were he daft enough to chance something I would have a more than a foot, 50lbs, 15 years and sobriety in my favour.

This evening went better – I got home, finished my tax return, dropped in on churchy friends for a cup of tea and a chat, and then nipped out for a pint.

First stop the Cricket Green: Courage Best on tap, a warm smile and a knowing wink from the barmaid, all whilst the landlady behind sailed back and forth like a billowing tea clipper, transporting authority and dead glasses about the bar. The Liverpool (soccer) game was on the TV; for sundry reasons I found it boring and so after a while sloped-out to my third, or rather first, and preferred, pub.

The one I that call my local.

Here they were showing the (Manchester) United game; marginally better, not least because the audience were involved in the game shown on the crappy corner TV, rather than merely spectating the other pub’s projection widescreen. We saw Rooney get his first United hat-trick in his debut match, we saw the final score go down 6-2, United won, and all was right with the world.

“Beckham? Who’s Beckham?”

Every Tuesday night a band of regulars come in – a poker club, or somesuch – and order a heaped plate of sandwiches; any spares, and there are always spares due to the pub’s generosity, get distributed around the occupants of the “Public” bar first and foremost; the quieter “Saloon” bar gets second dibs. Tangy cheese and acrid onion; sweet branston pickle; zingy chicken tikka masala – all these and more compliment and complement the staff, atmosphere, and the CAMRA-approved beer.

Some things you can’t get anywhere else. An English pub is one of them.