With all the doomy talk about the future of our public houses – some of it emanating from me, I confess – it is reassuring to report on one that has so far proved impervious to the decline. Let us pray that the Rose and Crown, in North Parade, Oxford, will continue to prove so.

This very much depends, I suspect, how long its splendid tenants, Andrew and Debbie Hall, choose to remain in charge. They are licensees of the old school. By this, I mean (in part) they are people their customers go to the pub expecting to see and feel disappointed not to see (excellent though their staff are).

I was surprised to find out last week that they have now been there for 25 years. The discovery came in the form of an invitation to enjoy a glass of fizz with them on Saturday to celebrate the anniversary. As someone who has known them from day one (well, certainly from week one), I accepted the summons with pleasure.

In fact, I had already spent the evening – indeed day – revisiting other old haunts. In the morning sunshine (car roof down) I had driven to the Victoria Arms at Marston, an excellent Wadworth’s pub run by David Kyffin, who for many years had charge of the King’s Arms, in Holywell (as did his parents before him). We were able to sit out in the garden, overlooking fields that a few days earlier had been covered in snow.

In the evening, we had a table booked for dinner at the Black Boy in Old High Street Headington. This is to be the subject of next week’s restaurant review. Since our bus was there very early (no hold-up, for once, at those terrible roadworks), we had time to visit the White Hart, an Everard’s house just around the corner. I had not been there for a year or so and was pleased to see it remains the popular, friendly local it has always been. Its licensees, since October, have been Dan and Carole Reilly.

I enjoyed an animated conversation with the barman about the various real ales on offer. These are forbidden fruit for me, alas, these days, but I did permit myself a little taste of the unusual Pitch Black, described as a draught stout but actually, I was told, a porter.

The pub is one of many these days operating a weekly quiz (they were competing for a £300 prize in the Eagle and Child when I was there on Sunday). I don’t think I will be entering, though; Rosemarie and I could only identify one of the celebrities from the dozens featured in recent picture rounds.

I will hold my comments on the Black Boy until next week. Suffice it to say that it is a very different place from the pub I used to visit three decades ago to enjoy many delicious malt whiskies and more snuff than anyone’s nose could reasonably accommodate with its ebullient landlord, the much-mourned Leigh Jackson. (I found, lest he worry, chef/patron Chris Bentham’s food first-class.) At the Rose, post dinner, we found the throng of well-wishers gathered to see Andrew and Debbie every bit as large as I expected. By then, they had been welcoming friends all day, with a pig roast for those who had popped in at lunchtime.

There was a wide cross-section of customers, both in terms of age and (dare I?) class. This is another feature, I would suggest, of a pub properly run that has not become a ghetto for people of exactly the same sort.

Patrons include many from the teaching profession (school and university), which means you can always obtain the answer to any question here.