GEORGE Orwell imagined his ideal pub back in 1946 which he called The Moon Under Water. Inside were glasses with handles, motherly barmaids and roaring, open fires. Tobacco and stamps were sold behind the bar. I’ve been thinking about my ideal pub.

What I want from a pub in 2015 is a good pint of beer and a convivial atmosphere.

What I want is a pub like The Punchbowl in Abingdon whose landlady Linda serves you with a smile, where the jukebox plays all day long and you can sit and drink for England.

What I want is a traditional British boozer, not dissimilar to the pub Orwell imagined almost 70 years ago.

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But instead I’ve just been confronted by a man, dressed as a chef, trying to sell me a goat’s cheese salad.

You know the kind of pub I’m talking about. The one that’s gone upmarket. The one whose menu startles the locals, as though they’ve just been confronted by a goat in their own bathroom.

You might think twice about going in. But don’t.

Now if I really was to describe my ideal pub it would, like Orwell’s, have glasses with handles.

There would be tankards hanging from the rafters. A jukebox would play old records. The piano in the corner would be locked up, preventing me from playing it. A cheery fug of cigarette smoke would hang in the air. They’d sell Double Diamond.

I’m sure such a pub still exists.

The only problem is that it will have been boarded up on a roadside somewhere years ago, its windows smashed out and its paintwork the colour of gone-off meat.

So if I want that second pint I have to get with the 21st Century.

Great traditional boozers like The Punchbowl are a rarity. But it’s not all bad.

For instance, I admire the determination of people like John Pugsley, landlord of Jacob’s Inn in Wolvercote.

With 40 staff, rent, rates, VAT and the cost of booze, his pub might not survive on beer sales alone – and they sell vast amounts of it.

But his passion, as he described it to me, is to see historic, interesting buildings brought back from the point of extinction by young entrepreneurs and chefs who can cook.

I have to buy into this passion. And be less of a snob about pubs who sell food.

There a few things more depressing than to see a village lose its only pub. Those places where instead of hearing Auld Lang Syne bring in the New Year you’ll hear nothing but the buzz of TV sets.

And that’s why, although many people’s New Year’s Resolution is to drink less, mine is to drink more. My New Year’s Resolution is to spend more money down the pub.

Can I suggest you do the same, how remote your local is to your own, ideal The Moon Under Water?

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